The hospital wristband is a tool that has been a crucial part of a patients hospital stay for decades. The traditional bracelet identifies the patient and has been updated recently with barcodes for access to further patient data. Recently, several companies have began to leverage new technology to enhance the band to allow for much more capability. If you begin to look at the hospital as a whole system and look at how the wristband impacts various stages of the process the patient goes through in the system, the old band is archaic. New bands can use QR codes and RFID tags to better allow for patient information and location in the hospital. Retailers have been tracking their products through the manufacturing process for years now so why don’t hospitals track as well? The updated bands would allow for increased hospital efficiency because now you can begin to track metrics with the smart bands.
Photo: Wake Forest Baptist Health
By tracking the patients journey through the hospital you can begin to spot common bottle necks in the system. New identification methods also more accurately identify patients as bands could be hard to read and patients get mixed up do to poor ID and tracking. Increased data accuracy by way of smart bands could lead to less and less patient mix ups. Whether patient ID comes in the form of new smart bands or bio metrics, its time for hospitals to optimize their processes with the help of technology enabled wristbands.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-turn-to-biometrics-to-identify-patients-11549508640?mod=cx_life&cx_navSource=cx_life&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s
https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-it-time-for-a-better-hospital-i-d-bracelet-11550671282
I really like the idea of an updated hospital wristband. By integrating technology such as this, better tracking could greatly increase efficiency and assist in identifying any bottlenecks. With the scanning feature for QR codes, I could see doctors and nurses being able to quickly access patient data on phones or tablets, rather than those old computers. My only concern and question is regarding the price at which the bands would cost? RFID/QR codes are used heavily today, but would there need to be special accommodations for hospitals? Also, would this cost be worth the potential efficiency gained by the hospital? In general, this is a great idea that I would love to see implemented more and more!
Interesting article. I had an internship at a hospital management company last summer, so I know the importance of gathering information in the healthcare field. We had a huge problem with data integrity. Certain hospitals entered in IDs as 00-0000 while others entered IDs as 000000. So when we tried to query patient information we had issues finding the correct patient because of differences in IDs between different hospital networks.
I think the wristband would solve the issue of data integrity. A hospital management company can deploy these wristbands to all of their hospitals to have more normalized data which in turn will help with data gathering and predictive analytics. Many hospitals have embraced visualization tools like Tableau for hospital floor management, so I would imagine that these wristbands can be used to feed data into their Tableau dashboards to improve the efficiency of b0th nurses and doctors. However, do you think these wristbands could lead to any HIPPA violations?
This is a great concept for hospital patients. This reminds me of smart watches, but serves a more important purpose in my opinion. Hospitals can be frustrating for patients, doctors, and other staff because of volume issues, staffing issues, and overall quality issues. These wristbands are a great step in the right direction by allowing patients to be moved and treated more efficiently. This could lead to saving money for the hospital and time for both the patient and the staff. Obviously, there can be some issues when that much information can be accessed through an armband, but I think the reward outweighs the risk.
RFID bands and hospitals are a natural match, and hospitals across the U.S. should be moving towards implementing this easy-to-use feature. As someone who has volunteered at hospitals in the past, I know how much of a headache collecting and accessing patient information can be. Information would often get lost or take hours to locate. With an RFID band, it can significantly increase the efficiency of hospitals, and allow patients to get faster care. This in turn leads to more patients being helped, and makes the lives of everyone working at the hospital a lot easier. These bands can also help homeless people who come into medical shelters with no prior medical information. They can have their info recorded on the band, and it can be used universally at any medical shelter/hospital they visit.