# RFID Technology for Management and Tracking: e-Health Applications  
[PERSON]  
1 Area de Teoria de la Sefal y Comunicaciones, Universidad de Oviedo, 33203 Gijon (Asturias), Spain; alvarezzguilermo@uniovies (G.A.N. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (F.L.-H.A.) [PERSON]  
2 Faculty of Computer Science, Hochschule Mannheim, 68163 Mannheim, Germany; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
1 Area de Teoria de la Sefal y Comunicaciones, Universidad de Oviedo, 33203 Gijon (Asturias), Spain; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (G.A.N. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (F.L.-H.A.) [PERSON]  
3 Departamento de Medicina, Universidad de Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo (Asturias), Spain; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.P.); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (I.G.-P.A.) Footnote 1: email: {j.j.  
One of the reasons for increasing the automation level in low- and medium-complexity tasks is to reduce the risk of mistakes made by employees. Routinely tasks are under supervised due to an overestimation of the level of self-confidence of the employees. In sectors such as health, this is especially critical, as it has a direct impact in the health condition of the patients. For example, medication errors are behind 22,300 deaths per year in the National Health Service (NHS) [5], having also a significant economic impact [6]. Several factors related to medication error can be highlighted [7]: (i) similarity in the packaging or names of the drugs; (ii) patients allergic to some drugs; (iii) drugs whose use is very specific. Up until 2008, the wrong route of drug administration, wrong medication, and wrong dose were responsible for 9.5%, 16%, and 40.9% of patient death due to medication errors, respectively [7]. These figures support the need for automation and/or the introduction of additional ICT supervision systems in the aforementioned medical procedures. The implementation of ICT systems for automation of logistics and management in hospitals should consider the following design requirements [2; 8; 9]:  
(i) the use of disposable, low-cost sensors, which will be tagged to the patients, medication, and medical assets to be tracked; and  
(ii) the connectivity between hardware (readers, end-user mobile devices, servers with their databases located at the hospital ICT department) should be adapted to the existing network infrastructure of the hospital and/or be based on wireless networks. Among the advantages provided by ICT systems for location and tracking in healthcare applications [2], the following can be noted:  
(i) Minimization of medical errors: on the one hand, patients labelled with a RFID wrist can be tracked in real-time, so doctors, physicians and nurses can know if there is an issue (e.g., a delay) in the medical treatment required by the patient. On the other hand, drugs can be better tracked, thus reducing the risk of wrong or forgotten drug administering to patients. (ii) Optimization of resources: for example, doctors and nurses can know the exact amount of blood supplies. Some medical assets and instrumentation can also be located easily, including information about their availability. ICT systems can be grouped according to the most extended technologies: optical identification systems (barcodes and QR codes) [10] and radiofrequency-based systems [11]. The use of QR codes and barcodes for traceability and logistics has been introduced in a wide range of sectors for decades, and also in the field of medicine (e.g., traceability of patients during the different stages of the medical treatment at the hospital). Aiming to overcome some of the limitations of these optical-based tracking systems (listed in Table 1), radiofrequency-based technologies have been developed and gradually implemented, first in the area of transport and logistics (e.g., toll collection in highways, warehouses and retail stores), and recently in the field of medical services (e-health). Radiofrequency-based systems for location and tracking consist mainly of tags (attached to the items or patients to be monitored) and tag readers.