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Response to JAMA article on RFID
By RadarFind | July 3, 2008
The RFID study mentioned in JAMA does not apply to the RTLS technology deployed by RadarFind.
The recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association covered the likely scenario of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers causing anomalous behavior in electronic critical care equipment, when those devices were brought within close range of the RFID readers. This can happen because of the high energy levels and the frequencies used by some RFID systems that can in fact interfere with medical equipment in hospital environments.
The RFID study mentioned in the JAMA report does not apply to the Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) technology deployed by RadarFind.
The RadarFind system elements use a tiny fraction of the power levels utilized in the JAMA study – so small that they cannot create enough interfering energy to make a nearby electronic device malfunction. The radio frequency where RadarFind’s system operates also does not interfere with electronic medical equipment.
The study reported by JAMA used high-powered, RFID readers within the 868 MHz frequency with passive RFID tags. For passive RFID systems (as mentioned previously), you need a very powerful reader to energize/read the tags. To compare this to the RadarFind system, the power level for RadarFind readers is about 20,000 times less than the readers that were used in the study. High-energy readers are not required with the RadarFind system since its tags have their own power source (a battery). We are not surprised that interference occurred at such a high power level with the passive RFID system observed in this study.
We are also not surprised that the low-powered active RFID tags operating in the 125 kHz frequency band caused interference with electronic medical devices as cited in the JAMA study. The RadarFind system operates in the 900 MHz frequency band where there is no interference with medical devices. Health care practitioners and RF system engineers designed the RadarFind system to work within a frequency (902 MHz to 928 MHz) specifically so that there would be no interference with hospital equipment.
Additional information regarding the differences between RFID and RTLS technology is available from RadarFind. Please feel free to contact us: info@radarfind.com for further clarification or if you have any other questions regarding this study.
Topics: news | 2 Comments »
[...] is another text on the subject, with nice precisions on the usual frequency used in USA and Canada for active [...]
Posted by: On JAMA’s RFID in Healthcare Study « Procurement Technologies on August 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pmInteresting
Posted by: RadarFind on February 9th, 2009 at 12:32 pm