The Dutch research team said in a recently released report that radio frequency identification chips (RFID) used to track and trace products could precipitate failure of critical care medical devices such as pacemakers and ventilators.
Erik Jan van Lieshout, a critical care physician at the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam said that electromagnetic interference from the chips caused 22 problems that could endanger patients, ranging from completely stopping syringe pumps to switching off ventilators.
Van Lieshout co-led the study and he said that "We wanted to investigate the safety of RFID in healthcare because it hasn't been tested,". "This is the first study ever done on RFID interference within the hospital."
There is an ever increasing market for RFID as retailers have embraced RFID and the technology is now moving into healthcare, with an estimated growth to more than twice the existing market in ten years.
The potential applications for RFID include marking drug blister packs to prevent counterfeiting, monitoring blood products with temperature-sensitive blood products and tracking and tracing important medical equipment and devices.
As already mentioned earlier the potential for harmful electromagnetic interference from electronic anti-theft surveillance systems on some pacemakers and defibrillators is also known but the effect on other critical care devices is not certain, the researchers said.
Van Lieshout and colleagues in a written report to the Journal of the American Medical Association said that "Implementation of RFID in the intensive care unit and other similar health care environments should require on-site electromagnetic interference tests in addition to updated international standards.
In the research conducted by the Dutch team, they tested electromagnetic interference of the two most common RFID systems in a one-bed patient room in an intensive care unit with no patients.
Their tests on 41 devices identified 22 hazardous incidents, two they classified as significant and another 10 as light. Most of the hazardous incidents occurred at about 9.8 inches from the equipment, though they recorded problems up to six meters away.
A hazardous incident was a problem that could directly endanger a patient while a significant incident was one requiring a nurse's attention but not something that put a person at immediate risk.
The report also said that the research findings should not dissuade hospitals from using a technology but they underscore the need to make sure wireless signals are safe for patients as there can be a real danger to the patients.
