RFID Journal LIVE! 2023 will feature end-user companies discussing RFID’s use in healthcare, as well as exhibitors offering tagging solutions for that industry. To learn more, visit the event’s website.
If there is one constant in life, it is that you can always expect things to change. It is inevitable. Change happens for many reasons. I have found that even if the change is driven by something bad, unfortunate or even disastrous, good things can come from the need for change. This couldn’t be more apparent after the early disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many businesses had to re-think how they serve their customers, deal with supply chain issues, operate with employees working from home and ultimately survive in the “new normal.” Many also found themselves needing to do more with less. This meant dealing with inefficiencies that may have always existed but suddenly became that much more important. Unfortunately, there were several industries that could do nothing but battle the storm and make significant cuts in staff, budget and actions to weather the outcome.
Sabesan Sithamparanathan
For instance, we work very closely with folks in the aerospace industry, and projects were put on hold. And obviously in the entertainment industry, the impact was felt dramatically. However, we also dealt with the retail and medical sectors, and they both were impacted in quite different ways. Our projects became more active in the retail space because of the need to accurately identify inventory at each location. This became very important as online sales increased and retail stores became like distribution centers for our clients.
In the medical space, you can imagine how the influx of patients and high demand for supplies and equipment stressed the everyday hospital environment, the workers, the patients and management. Inefficiencies that may have been ignored could no longer be ignored, because of the dramatic impact it could have on patient care. Because of this, technology was sought out at a rapid pace and the technology space showed an increase in demand.
From PCR testing advancements to technology to improve operational efficiencies in hospitals, labs and other medical facilities, rapid help was in need and technology companies were stepping up to be problem solvers. All the while, leaders in the medical space were driving advancement and improving weaknesses. Rewind back and remember how early on the shortage of respirators was impacting the hospitals’ ability to properly care for patients.
Also put some thought around the fact that ventilators, although a highly important piece of equipment, were not the only piece of critical equipment necessary to provide proper patient care. Likewise, the ability to locate and administer the critical device in a timely fashion had a direct impact on patient care. That is what it is really all about patient care. When great leaders in the medical space see improvement is needed to provide better patient care, they share their vision and look for solutions.
As one great example, Didi (Emmanuel) Akinluyi, Ph.D., who leads a clinical engineering team in a large English NHS organization, recognized that technology was needed at his facility. “We work to maximize the value drawn from medical devices,” he says. “We want to enable a leaner, more efficient use of mission-critical medical devices, making more available at the point of need and more manageable through their life, thus providing visibility and leading to better care for our patients.”
Didi had encountered this need before, but the pandemic environment brought the need to an even greater light. He had previously been interested in the ability to quickly and accurately locate equipment and had met challenges in assuring affordability, performance (accuracy, latency) and ROI in prospective solutions. These challenges are shared with many hospitals and, unfortunately, it has been difficult to find a solution that would work for everyone.
One technology that hospitals consider is active (battery-powered) RFID tags. With the right infrastructure, active RFID can be read at the proper distance and time, but it also has some drawbacks that limit its application. Those limitations are the fact that the tags are costly and require maintenance. This means that with thousands of mission-critical devices in every hospital, only the most well-funded hospitals are the clients likely to be able to take advantage of the solution with a very long ROI and the battery replacement and resources necessary to do that.
During his search for solutions, Didi reached out to my team from Cambridge. He presented his challenge and the fact that he was looking for high-performing, accurate and reliable technology. Of course, he also wanted a something that would have a return on investment that made sense. In further exploring this need, we began to realize the scope of this challenge and the potential for a solution to drive value. We discovered that many hospitals’ holdings include a mixture of leased and purchased equipment inventory.
In researching, we realized that because of the lack of control and tracking for these mission-critical assets, many hospitals over-lease these devices, spending far more than needed. In fact, we estimate this over-spending could be close to $1 billion across hospitals in the United Kingdom and the United States alone. Beyond this, we realized that efficient tracking could have a significant impact on labor costs and, most importantly, a dramatic impact on proper patient care. It comes down to having the right piece of equipment in the right place and at the right time.
Our team presented a solution to this use case, which included advanced reader technology. This technology would make passive (battery-free) tags read more real-time, like an active tag solution. Although this was not an approach his organization had considered, Didi was familiar with the conventional reader technology available in passive tag solutions, and he wanted to test and re-test before accepting that passive tags could be a solution that would work.
Given the scientific nature of how we operate and the fact that our results could impact the ability to properly care for patients, we welcomed the testing and set up an environment that would best duplicate the hospital environment where the equipment would exist. We agreed to support their efforts in installing the identical environment for a conventional passive RFID solution so we could compare the results and provide data that could clearly show the improvements made.
I am happy to say our team, in combination with Didi’s team, was able to generate results that proved this solution to be a proper fit for this challenge. First of all, read accuracy vs. the conventional passive solution was 50 percent improved and well above 99 percent. Along with that, the ability to monitor and accurately log direction was improved by more than 30 percent in the most challenging scenarios. This is a substantial improvement and clearly the results we were looking to achieve to help solve the challenge of tracking mission-critical items.
Beyond that, we know we can solve the cost challenge proposed by the use of active tags. By solving this challenge, we have created a solution that can be adopted by hospitals of any size, not just the well-funded private hospitals. Now small, regional hospitals can also take advantage of creating efficiency, cost savings and ultimately improved patient care.
According to Didi, when it comes to future expansion of technology, it comes down to “opening up more possibilities to exploit the data for patient benefit.” We love that. It’s not a concern for cost savings, reduced shrinkage or efficiency. It really is as simple as the benefit the patient will receive from the medical professional’s ability to capture more data, accurately respond to needs in a timely manner and make better decisions about care.
All else aside, that is the desire of every medical professional: to provide better patient care through making decisions faster, having access to things at the time of need and challenging technology providers to help them provide a solution for their use case. Although COVID-19 challenged us as a society and most certainly our medical professionals, it also provided awareness to existing challenges that, when solved, enable better patient care.
Way to step up and challenge us to support your needs. We look forward to a future of providing improved patient care.
Dr. Sabesan Sithamparanathan is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur with more than 15 years’ experience in the IoT space. Sabesan founded PervasID based on his Ph.D. research at Cambridge University. He invented and developed the world’s most accurate passive RFID technology. As founder and CEO, Sabesan successfully grew PervasID from its inception to a global enterprise, providing transformative solutions to the healthcare, industrial and retail sectors with a complete product suite. Throughout his career, he has been an expert in entrepreneurship, strategic business development and innovation leadership. Sabesan was awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Silver Medal.