Safety portal: the safest goes through the air--ubiquitous high-risk reminders bridging out the patient safety in emergency department.
Under the safety net of hospital-based patient safety informatics (PSI) system, RFID is build to adapt emergency department safety needs and the process improvement activities. We implemented the RFID framework as the electronic patient identifier into the process improvement of ED workflow; it defined as the safety portal to introduce PSI safety features on the real-time basis.


METHODS
Since 2004, we were applying RFID technology into a 200 daily visits emergency department of the regional medical center in Taipei, Taiwan. We then developed wireless web-based RFID safety portal to implement the real-time safety reminders such as the laboratory and radiology reports to the physician who can make decision promptly to the patients in the ED.


RESULTS
Under the ED safety portal, the diagnosis time for physicians to make clinical decision is largely reduced nearly 40 percent due to the safety enhancement RFID system. ED physician who could actively receive patient's updated clinical data to make clinical decision via web-based informatics system reasonably decreases.


CONCLUSIONS
The effectiveness of RFID system not only enhance patient identification during ED process but combine ED safety net which providing needed data for ED physician and staff who visit ED patients with valuable real-time data on time. Patient safety on ED can be clearly improved from the embracing modern technology and build up a patient centered ED environment.
Chen
Chang-I
CI
Graduate Institute of Medical Informatics, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
Choy
Cheuk-Sing
CS
Chu
Tu-Bin
TB
Lo
Yu-Sheng
YS
Huang
Wei-Kee
WK
Kuan
Ching-Feng
CF
Li
Yu-Chuan
YC
D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D010355:Patient Identification Systems / Q000379:methods; D011846:Radio Waves; D017010:Reminder Systems; D017751:Safety Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013624:Taiwan; D013685:Telecommunications