A BBC article, ‘Tagging’ improves patient safety, describes how RFID is being used in UK hospitals.

Hospital patients are used to wearing wristbands. But now those bands have gone high-tech.

At the Birmingham Heartlands Hospital patients wear RFID wristbands that carry personal data embedded. When they arrive they have a digital photo taken and loaded on to an electronic tag contained in a wristband worn throughout their stay.

Staff dealing with the tagged patients have access to PDAs with which they can scan the bands and also access patient details, via wifi, from a secure area on the hospital’s central computer system. A ‘traffic light’ system flashes up when a patient is ready for their operation, and as they go through the theater doors, a sensor reads the bar code on their wrist and their details are displayed on the theater’s computer screen.

Spotted on Smart Mobs.

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