Automating RFID medical device disinfection

For medical workers, management of surgical instruments has always been a high maintenance concern. Among them, during storage, use, cleaning, disinfection and surgery, these instruments are often small and easily lost. Most medical institutions have specialized equipment disinfection service centers or supply departments to disinfect medical equipment. Various surgical instrument kits, preparation of equipment required for surgery, management and rental of medical equipment, and acquisition or purchase of instruments, implants, etc. RFID technology can effectively collect and record item information quickly, and form electronic files, informatization, and automated management.

RFID can help hospitals to perform process management very well. By installing electronic tags on each device, it provides a real-time, accurate and automated electronic information recording method. RFID does not require the hospital to introduce a new process system. It can seamlessly connect with the existing system processes of the hospital and provide relevant file information for each link in the process. The entire system can also be automatically updated during instrument repairs or maintenance.

Preventing surgical infection is a very important issue for all medical institutions. The hospital supply department can reduce and avoid infection through an automated disinfection management process, ensuring that all surgical instruments are strictly sterilized and dried and properly stored and used. RFID can realize the automatic management of the entire sterilization process and optimize the lease management procedure of instruments and equipment.

RFID technology achieves the main functions:

1. In the pre-operative disinfection and supply department, the cleaning of surgical instruments requires multiple procedures. The omission of procedures may lead to hidden safety hazards, and the regulatory measures introduced by RFID automatic identification technology can effectively solve this problem.

2. Surgical instruments can be packaged and classified, and RFID readers can be used to test the packaging and classification of surgical instruments to find possible omissions in the packaging process;

3. Operating room equipment management. Intraoperative management mainly includes preoperative inspections and postoperative inspections. Doctors confirm that each link needs to be accurately identified to avoid the serious consequences of loss of surgical instruments;

4. Comprehensive information management, statistical query, and reporting system.

If the hospital rents medical equipment and equipment that it does not intend to purchase for the time being, the hospital supply department must also clean and disinfect the equipment, identify it with RFID, to ensure that the equipment is properly maintained and stored. Therefore, applying RFID technology to these instruments can also improve the utilization rate and management efficiency of the instruments.

The hospital uses RFID technology to fully automate the control of surgical instruments, reducing manual inventory of trays and instruments, and instead using RFID readers to automatically collect instruments with RFID tags within the reading range. These data can be used to analyze blind spots and defects in the management process, which promotes the quality improvement and optimization of medical device management.