Title: RFID and health management: is it a good tool against system inefficiencies?

Authors: Francisco Aguado Correa, Maria Jose Alvarez Gil, Lucia Barcos Redin

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Carlos III University of Madrid, 126, Getafe 28903, Madrid, Spain. ' Department of Business Administration, Carlos III University of Madrid, 126, Getafe 28903, Madrid, Spain. ' Department of Business Administration, Carlos III University of Madrid, 126, Getafe 28903, Madrid, Spain

Abstract: Healthcare is considered to be the biggest service industry on the planet. It is a growing industry, facing many complex challenges in trying to deliver cost-effective, high-value, accessible healthcare and has traditionally been slow to embrace new business techniques and technologies (Wickramasinghe et al. (2005) Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 1, pp.316–334). Technology has the potential to help meet many of these challenges, thus contributing to reducing healthcare expenditure as well as offering quality healthcare treatment (Wickramasinghe, N. and Goldberg, S. (2004a) Int. J. Mobile Communications, Vol. 2, pp.140–156; Wickramasinghe, N. and Misra, S. (2004b) Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 1, pp.316–334). The main aim of this paper is to bring to the attention of the reader Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and to illustrating how the application of RFID in healthcare can enable this industry to overcome existing technological and workflow limitations.

Keywords: counterfeiting; EPC; electronic product code; healthcare technology; system inefficiencies; privacy tracking; real-time location; RFID; radio frequency identification; healthcare management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2007.013164

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2007 Vol.8 No.3/4, pp.268 - 297

Published online: 11 Apr 2007 *

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