European Journal of ePractice

The Fondazione Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (the Italian National Cancer Institute) in Milan can be considered a forerunner in the usage of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the European healthcare sector, as it is moving towards this technology in many clinical areas. The Istituto had a need for greater efficiency in the management of the transfusion process, as it had no information system for the detailed monitoring and control of the process; the transfusion service did not have instant access to all the necessary information and for some procedures operators only have access to hard-copy aids.

Using RFID the Istituto can now achieve a greater capacity for controlling and monitoring the transfusion system, with the aim of enhancing safety, transparency and quality. RFID tags are sticked on blood bags and patient wristbands. Staff is provided with RFID identification cards and PDAs (with an application developed by the project team) and thus enabled to register patients at their arrival, verify the patient-blood match and recognise at any time patients and transfusional units. Each event is automatically traced by the system and sent to the Transfusion Centre, providing an essential informative feedback which was not available before.

The extension of the system to the whole transfusion process (including e.g. the match of blood sample tubes, haemovigilance reporting and functionality enhancements) as well as its implementation to all the Istituto's wards and to pilot wards at Ospedale Niguarda (the most important hospital in Milan) has been founded by the Regional Administration of Lombardy. Moreover, the Istituto asked the project team (which includes also Fondazione Politecnico di Milano) to exploit the achieved experience in a new project about total traceability over time- and temperature-sensitive surgical specimens from the operating table to the Oncological Tissue Bank, as well as for tracking surgical instruments.