Electromagnetic interference on critical medical equipments by RFID system

In health care industry, RFID technology gains more attention due to the effective tracing of valuable medical equipments, devices and more importantly ensures patient safety. The expenditure incurred for RFID implementation in healthcare is progressively increasing. RFID technology can also be helpful for managing patient´s medication, drug delivery, medical process, drug counterfeiting and monitoring of blood samples using temperature sensitive RFID tags. Different RFID tags were used in the health care industry as recommended by FDA and European Telecommunications Standard Institute. The Electromagnetic radiation from RFID tags and its readers may cause interference to the effective functioning of the medical equipment. The nature of interference caused depends on tag type, the distance between reader and medical device, the operating frequency and maximum power emission by the reader. Several literatures enumerated the factual data about implementation of RFID in different hospitals and also elaborated the method of EMI testing. The results of different literatures suggest that RFID can be implemented in health care industry with necessary precautionary measures being taken. This paper reviews the results of various research work undertaken on RFID implementation and their EMI effects in health care industry.