Requirements for radio frequency identification in healthcare

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a growing technology among different industries. As a technology, it has been used since the Second World War, but just in the last decade, the information technology (IT) community and healthcare have been taking more action on studying and developing the technology. In this paper, we represent the general requirements that healthcare sets for the RFID technology. The paper is a part of the research project MaISSI (Managing IT Services and Service Implementation) where our aim is to implement an automated identification system (AIMC) for our case hospital's medication care. The AIMC uses the RFID technology for patient identification and the bar code technology for medication identification. The system will automate the identification processes during medication administration, reduce medication errors and increase the patient safety.