Document Management System using Wireless RFID Technology for Intelligent Healthcare Operations

It has been estimated that in the UK National Health Service (NHS) 33% of nurses spend at least an hour in a shift on non-productive activities, equals 40 hours a month and costs the NHS approximately £900 million per year. This includes searching for equipment and patient records, a situation which will become more acute as the ageing population is expected to rise to 18.5% in the UK by 2020. The paper presents the use of emerging Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for application in tracking and tracing document such as patient records in a hospital environment. The system developed uses low-cost passive tags to provide real time non intervention information using a TCP/IP protocol allow monitored across the organisation to track and trace and reduce un-productive time and prevent loss of documentation. This information can be linked to intelligent systems such as work flow management, simulation and data mining techniques etc. to provide intelligent decision making and what-if analysis. The paper discusses the development of Electronic Patient Record (EPR) and its issues and what our proposed system can offer and enhance EPR system.