RFID-based Real-time Localization System Enhancement for Retained Surgical Instrument in the Body: A Preliminary Case Study
Erick Jones, Joshua Bolton, Joses Jenish Smart, Julian George · International Supply Chain Technology Journal · 2019
Retained surgical items are classified as preventable medical errors that cost the United Statesapproximately $17 to $29 billion each year and is the most frequently reported sentinel event in 2011 asreported by the Joint Commission. This research proposes a new approach to decrease such preventablemedical errors by developing a Radio Frequency Identification-based Real Time Locating System (RTLS)for surgical operations (RfSurg). Patient safety concern, e.g. the excessive exposure of x-ray to the patientafter the surgery, is a major motivation behind the need of RTLS in this research. The use of RTLStechniques in this research may eliminate the need of the x-ray procedures and improve the time neededto find surgical equipment retained in the body. The results obtained from this non-clinical research haveproven that the RFID-based RTLS is able to preliminarily answer the research question of: “If the surgicalequipment is detected in the patient’s body, can it be located in a timely fashion during surgery?” Thisnon-clinical study can be extended to further efforts for prototyping RfSurg with regard to its currentlimitations, e.g. elaborating some explanatory factors that could explain their relationship to thelocalization error.