Radio Frequency ID Devices May Be Problem In Hospitals

Hospital hallways are covered with warnings to silence mobile phones, which can interfere with medical equipment. Other devices commonly used in hospitals might have the same effect on critical-care medical equipment, new research suggests.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that radio frequency identification devices, RFIDs — commonly used in security cards, blood bag tags and even surgical sponges — may cause ventilators and other life-saving hospital equipment to malfunction.

Researchers from the Netherlands tested the effect that two types of RFIDs had on 41 kinds of medical equipment, including pacemakers, mechanical ventilators, defibrillators, monitors and anesthesia devices.

The tests were conducted at varying distances in a patient-free, one-bed room in an intensive-care unit.

Out of 123 tests for electromagnetic interference between RFIDs and medical devices, 34 instances of interference occurred. In those cases, the midpoint between reader and device was less than a foot. Among the hazardous incidences, a mechanical ventilator switched off, a syringe pump stopped, and an external pacemaker malfunctioned.

The study authors were not surprised by the results. “We suspected there would be interference,” says co-author Erik Jan van Lieshout, a critical-care physician at the Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The results are worth noting, but the methodology was not ideal, says Donald Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. Berwick, who wrote an editorial in the same issue of JAMA, says more research is needed, and soon.

“To get a true understanding of the interference these devices might cause in a real critical-care unit, you need to conduct the study with patients present,” Berwick says.

But van Lieshout argues that type of testing could be risky. He says he hopes medical equipment makers will create protective technologies to shield their products.