Radio Nodes Used to Track Medical and Biologics Supplies

Radio node technology can aid in the intelligent tracking of hospital supplies, such as blood bags, preventing damage, and loss.

The Opal Health system, developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS; Munich, Germany), the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), and other institutions, is a active radio node system that is battery-powered and has its own processing unit, allowing it to continuously gather information and trigger actions. An example of one such possible application of the technology is the use of the radio nodes to optimize the management of medical devices in hospitals. Devices such as syringe pumps and cardiac monitors often move between departments and can be hard to track down when they are needed. This problem could soon be a thing of the past, since attaching radio nodes to the devices enables them to report their position automatically.

Another example involves the tracking of blood supplies kept on hand for emergencies. If the blood bags are not needed, they can only be reused if the cold chain has been maintained. Until now, monitoring this chain has been a tricky process, but a radio node attached to the blood bag could constantly monitor the temperature to ensure that most of these blood supplies can be reused. The radio nodes could also help improve safety; for example, using the wrong blood by mistake during a blood transfusion could have fatal consequences for the patient. Radio nodes attached to the blood bags and to a patient wristband can exchange information, and if the donor blood does not match that of the patient, a warning signal sounds and a red light illuminates. A six-month test phase is set to begin at Erlangen University Hospital in January 2010.

"In contrast to tags that use RFID – radio frequency identification – we do not expect intelligent radio nodes to interfere with hospital medical devices,” explained Jürgen Hupp, Ph.D., head of communication networks department at IIS. "While the transmit power required for RFID tag reading can be as much as two watts, radio nodes only transmit in the milliwatt range.”

Related Links:
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg