Performance evaluation of commercial and experimental RFID UHF tags for transfusion medicine applications

This paper describes a technology testing part of a global project developed by University of Cagliari and "Azienda Ospedaliera Brotzu" (hereinafter AOB) in Cagliari (Italy), and funded by Sardinia Autonomous Region. Its two main targets are: patient safety enhancing and blood inventory management processes improving. Both are pursued through RFID-based process reengineering (Orrù, et al., 2010; Borelli et al., 2010). The project also aims at testing and validating RFID UHF technology for transfusion medicine. Nowadays, this technology is the accepted standard in worldwide logistic applications, while it is still considered innovative in transfusion medicine. Recent studies on RFID-based inventory management for medical drugs had satisfactory results. However, they revealed problems related to liquid proximity interaction (Polycarpou et al., 2012). Particularly, the paper focuses on experimental testing related to technology assessment, which aims at evaluating RFID performance in terms of accuracy, reading time, and reliability. UHF RFID tags were tested, to evaluate multiple readings. Two types of tag were applied to main logistics assets of the transfusion process: commercial tags were used to track blood test tubes; tag prototypes, designed and manufactured by University of Cagliari, were used to track blood bags. Experimental tests related to blood test tubes were performed in two different experimental scenarios: one indoor and not EM-isolated environment, and one EM-isolated environment. Experimental tests related to blood bags were performed in the latter only. Then, test results were compared with a previous testing research based on commercial tags.