Tracking blood products in hospitals using radio frequency identification: Lessons from a pilot implementation

Automated identification and data capture systems, such as bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID), can be a key enabler for reducing errors and enhancing safety throughout the blood product supply chain. This project was funded by a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the US National Institutes for Health. It represents the first comprehensive investigation to introduce RFID technology for automatic identification, tracking and monitoring of blood products across the blood banking spectrum. The System covers both blood center and hospital domains. The focus of this paper is to share lessons learned from our pilot, in a hospital domain, as performed at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC), in USA. UIHC is a Level I Trauma Center with over 760 beds; it administers more than 34,000 blood products per year. In 2005, UIHC developed a system using bar-code technology named INFORMM Patient Record (IPR) to prevent patient identification errors in blood transfusion. After implementing IPR, UIHC realized substantial improvements in prevention and detection of transfusion errors. The objective of the pilot was to assess RFID technology in transfusion services from four perspectives: safety, operational efficiency, performance reliability, and organizational impact. A significant outcome of this pilot was a comparison between IPR and the RFID System in terms of safety standards and performance. For this purpose, the two systems were run side-by-side using IPR as the benchmark, thus allowing extrapolation of the proven benefits of IPR to the RFID System. The pilot was performed from May 1 until May 28, 2012. The scope was limited to the “Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit” (14-beds) and to a remote storage location in the “Emergency Department”. During the pilot, the RFID and IPR systems collected over 35 samples and processed a total of 144 units. Data was collected from various reports and exception extracts from both systems, and from weekly user survey responses of UIHC personnel involved in the pilot. The RFID System successfully performed all the trace, tracking and safety checks as specified in the processes selected for this pilot. Both the RFID System and the IPR system executed every transaction back-to-back, equally detecting and preventing process errors. Both systems achieved an 83% reduction in process errors by replacing the manual based procedures for tracking and identification purposes. Error reduction also resulted in savings in labor costs. With the RFID System, the visibility and traceability of specimens and products were greatly improved. Our ROI analysis predicts a productivity gain of 10% with a Payback period of 2·5 years and a net present value of benefits equal to $485,000 in a 5 year horizon. The pilot was executed as planned and the assessment of the RFID System was successfully accomplished. Throughout the pilot, the System provided robust functionality equivalent to IPR. The pilot showed that the RFID System can provide high standards of safety for prevention and detection of errors, along with productivity gains.