RFID systems allow for the electronic tagging of assets, inventory, personnel, and patients. These systems draw
upon their successful uses in factory and retail settings to offer the potential for more efficient management of
resources in organizations, and they draw upon their military and security applications to offer the potential for
heightened identification functions.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that is rapidly becoming the standard for hospitals
to track inventory, identify patients, and manage personnel. Research involved qualitative methods including
participant observation and interviews with hospital staff members and industry consultants. Hospital staff,
especially nurses, expressed concern about the surveillance potential of these tracking technologies. Additionally,
nursing staff frequently experience an intensification of labor as a result of the implementation of RFID systems
because the task of keeping the systems operational often falls upon them.
RFID systems in hospitals must be further analyzed. The implications of RFID systems, such as privacy concerns and
work intensification for nursing and other hospital staff, should be taken into account from the outset, especially
during the design and implementation of the technology |