Modeling and Analysis of Surgery Patient Identification Using RFID

This article proposes a workflow and reliability model for surgery patient identification using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Certain types of mistakes may be prevented by automatically identifying the patient before surgery. The proposed workflow is designed to ensure that both the correct site and patient are engaged in the surgical process. The reliability model can be used to assess improvements in patients’ safety during this process. A proof-of-concept system is developed to understand the information flow and to use information in RFID-based patient identification. Reliability model indicates the occurrences of patient identification error can be reduced from 90 to as low as 0.89 per 10,000 surgeries using the proposed RFID based workflow.