A 6-Step Methodology to Evaluate the Cost and Benefits of RFId-based Innovation in the Healthcare Sector

Radio Frequency Identification (RFId) technologies have a great potential to improve process efficiency and effectiveness, thereby they are more and more considered a valuable tool to support operations within healthcare organisations. However, because of the variety of application areas and achievable benefits, structured assessment models are still limited in numbers and a limited support is given to managers in this industry. This paper describes a structured methodology to support the evaluation of the benefits enabled by RFId on "product traceability" applications, thus supporting the decision-making process and contributing to the scientific research effort already given to this topic. The methodology has been applied in an Italian case study.