Oct. 23, 2007—RFID Journal has announced plans to produce a one-day conference focused on helping health-care providers understand how the technology can help them improve patient safety, hospital operations and supply chain efficiencies. The workshop, titled
RFID in Health Care, will be held on Jan. 23, 2008, at the Westin Casuarina Las Vegas Hotel. This event will be collocated with
the second annual Summit on Healthcare Supply Chain Management, produced by
World Congress.
"The application of RFID in the health-care sector is a very hot topic these days, so we're excited about this event," says Mark Robert, founder and editor of RFID Journal. "This is the one event where health-care professionals can get objective advice and learn how and where they can benefit from using RFID. And because it is collocated with the Summit on Healthcare Supply Chain Management, health-care providers can benefit from attending both events."
Educational seminars at RFID in Health Care will cover the following topics:
- Patient Monitoring: Learn how hospitals are using RFID to track patients from check-in to checkout, reducing the time nurses spend collecting information, confirming patient identities and improving patient outcomes.
- Asset Tracking: Hospitals often have many assets that are underutilized. Real-world case studies will show how RFID systems can be employed to track assets in real time, improving asset utilization, lowering maintenance costs and reducing the need to purchase additional assets.
- Supply Chain Tracking: Hospitals purchase high-value pharmaceuticals and other supplies that can get stolen, lost or misplaced. Learn how RFID can help better track goods from major suppliers, as well as reduce costs and shrinkage.
- Patient Safety: RFID can be used not only to ensure that patients are never given the wrong drugs, but also to prevent the misidentification of surgical patients, make sure sponges are not left in patients and ensure that surgical instruments are properly sterilized.
- Automated Billing: Some hospitals have begun to use RFID to automatically identify patients, the procedures they undergo and the medicines they are given so that bills can be generated automatically, thereby reducing labor and ensuring that the hospitals are paid for care delivered.
The RFID in Health Care conference is designed to teach professional caregivers how the latest RFID systems can help them improve patient care while also cutting costs.
"There is no doubt in my mind," Roberti says, "that attendees to RFID in Health Care and the Summit on Health Care Supply Chain will come away with information that will generate tens of thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of dollars in annual savings for their organizations."
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