Design of a user driven real time asset tracking system using RFID in a healthcare environment

Scope and Method of Study. The proposed research is focused on user driven real time asset tracking system design using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in a dynamic healthcare environment. The research puts light on critical measures involved in information system of healthcare systems. The research develops an effective and efficient method for optimal RFID sensor placement based on the criticality index parameter for evaluation of sensor location importance. The Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) is applied to improve the computational efficiency. This proposed methodology is validated using both simulation data and an actual RFID system at Stillwater Medical Center, Stillwater, Oklahoma.;Findings and Conclusions. The research proposed new design methodology for RFID sensor (reader) placement. It improves the sensor coverage as well as the computational efficiency. The design of the system is user driven where user can change the parameters according to the requirements requested by the dynamic healthcare environment. The performance of the proposed methodology is compared with one of the existing system. The comparison results show that the sensor coverage can be improved from 15% to 66% for various definitions of the criticality index by using the proposed methodology. The utilization of DCT in sensor placement optimization can reduce the computational time by more than 50%. The proposed methodology is also capable of determining the number of sensors for the required coverage (or full coverage). This functionality provides the information for the tradeoff between sensor system performance and economical consideration.