RFID In Healthcare Market

”Every day I experience life in the world of healthcare IT, supporting 3000 doctors, 18000 faculty, and 3 million patients. In [this] blog I record my experiences with infrastructure, applications, policies, management, and governance as well as muse on such topics such as reducing our carbon footprint, standardizing data in healthcare, and living life to its fullest.”

Who is this guy?

On March 19th, Winco ID had the distinct pleasure of joining a group of highly energetic professionals from many walks of life exploring the potential and real-world applications using RFID technology.

The RFID conference was hosted by and held at Middlesex Community College. Speakers included representatives from retail, health care, RFID product manufacturing, defense and academic research. By 8:30am the hall was alive with energy.

First up, Keynote Speaker, John D. Halamka, MD, MS and the titles keeps on going. No disrespect. This man has a really long list of impressive titles and job functions.  For a full listing, go to his blog at geekdoctor.blogspot.com.

Dr. Halamka is a brilliant speaker. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, I highly recommend it. Dr. Halamka is a Healthcare CIO. At this conference, he spoke of RFID and tracking in healthcare. 

As patients, we may be overwhelmed at figuring out our medical bills, what doctor we saw, when is the next appointment. Dr. Halmka gave us a sneak preview of what the healthcare profession has to keep track of, manage, schedule, and document.

RFID shows promise with the ability to automatically capture large quantities of data without much if any human intervention at point of transaction. Dr. Halamka has done extensive work on pilot programs that have revealed valuable information needed to set up RFID to work in healthcare environments.

What are the challenges of setting up access points? How do you manage bandwidth? How do set up a system with the flexibility to change as your facility, business, or data needs change or grow? These are just some of the challenges Dr. Halamka has faced.

Hospital, emergency room, surgical suites, or warehouse, loading docks, tracking “things” can be a huge job with enormous impact on your business bottom line. Keeping a head of the technology curve can mean the difference between success and failure.

We’ve enjoyed sharing a morning with you Dr. Halamka. Visit Dr. Halamka at geekdoctor.blogspot.com for more insite into a day in his life, great tea recipes, what keeps him up at night and behind the scenes RFID in healthcare.

NOTE: Dr. John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup and CIO of Harvard Medical School, gave the keynote speech at Middlesex Community College’s March 19th RFID Conference. More than 50 representatives from retail, health care and manufacturing attended the conference at MCC’s Bedford campus.