Transparent Patient Safety System Using RFID Technology

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary goal of this program is to reduce medical errors in an Operating Room (OR) environment with the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Tagged patients and items will transparently be identified by a network of RFID interrogators. With the identification occurring seamlessly, the Transparent Patient Safety System will then identify any potential human errors in the Operating Room, such as those relating to laterality, patient allergies, drug-drug interactions and transfusion reactions before they occur and alert practitioners. Mobile Aspects, Inc. will be working directly with Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital to define, design and implement all parts of this program. The combination of RFID expertise from Mobile Aspects and Clinical experience from Massachusetts General Hospital will enable the Investigators to perform both a technical feasibility study in an Operating Room and also design a complex computing system. We will design and implement a patient identification system as a proof of concept utilizing RFID technology and real time communications within the operating room environment. Medical databases will be utilized to identify drug-drug interactions that will be accessed through the RFID server. As well, software will be written into the server that will provide proper patient information at desired locations. We will test the most effective real time alerts for potential errors within the OR. In Phase I, the feasibility of the system will be demonstrated utilizing inanimate models. In Phase II, real time testing will occur with patients in a Massachusetts General Hospital Operating Room.