[Med-privacy] RFID

[peter marshall]

RFID Technology Aimed at Improving Health Care Raises Privacy Issues
By John W. Kuzin
December 2008 | Privacy In Focus

Many medical centers throughout the United States and around the world 
are deploying Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to 
improve patient care and health care business processes. RFID tags are 
helping hospitals to better track inventory (such as automated external 
defibrillators and EKG monitors), assets (such as medical tools and 
medications), patients and professional staff.

RFID tags are now being placed on all sorts of medical equipment, such 
as ventilators and medication infusion pumps, so that these can be 
immediately located in an emergency. Smaller items, such as surgical 
sponges, are also being tagged so that they cannot be inadvertently 
left inside a patient when a surgical incision or wound is closed.

RFID technology also is reducing medical errors in other ways. For 
example, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, recently automated 
its process of tracking biopsy specimens taken during endoscopy 
procedures. These specimens previously were labeled by hand, and many 
errors were made. After it installed an RFID-based labeling and 
tracking system, the Mayo Clinic reduced the error rate from 9% to 
1%(based on a comparison of samples taken during the first three months 
of 2007, when the old system was in place, to the first three months of 
2008, after the RFID-enabled system was installed).

The growing use of RFID technology to track patients and employees has 
caused privacy experts to warn medical facilities to ensure that 
personally identifiable information and personal medical data are not 
improperly released or made accessible for nefarious uses. Requiring 
staff to carry tags also raises the specter of undue surveillance. As 
RFID technology use in health care facilities proliferates, legislation 
aimed at these privacy concerns will move to the fore.


Copyright 2008. Wiley Rein LLP.