Replacing Rubber Bands with RFID for a LivingPosted by Ronan Wisdom on Mon, Jul 25, 2011
Entertaining friends with dinner discussion about my work is easy. When asked what I do, I'll often say I replace rubber bands for a living with RFID. As our puzzled guests try to calculate exactly how many rubber bands it takes to put two kids through school, I'll add how my team and I are helping to save lives while doing it. Wide eyed, a friend in cyber security put down his fork and remarked 'I never realized they were that dangerous'.
Well, they are.
Here at ODIN we focus on challenging uses of RFID which push boundaries and implant the technology into new and exciting markets. Some of those are niche and highly specialist, while some explode into the mainstream (such as our industry leading work with RFID in social media and Facebook). It's certainly not for the faint hearted, and as a result we've built a team of highly talented software specialists focused on RFID, combined with the best physics expertise in the world to get the hardware bit highly accurate.
It was for this reason that in 2010 Dr. Schuyler Sanderson from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic approached us with a challenge; labeling error rates in pathology labs industry-wide average just over 9%. That means that almost one in ten specimens is mislabeled or misplaced. Some of the errors are minor, however some are not and can lead to delayed or misdiagnosis. And in some cases, death.
Almost every test lab in the world uses handwritten labels detailing patient and procedure information transcribed from a computer screen or communicated verbally, while the tests required are added to the specimen bottle by attaching more handwritten paper with rubber bands. In fact, Dr. Chang of the University of Chicago once remarked “If the world ran out of rubber bands we would not be able to practice anatomical pathology”.
It's just the way it's always been done. For years and years. And the scale of the problem is vast - a small test lab might handle hundreds of thousands of specimens annually. Extrapolate that figure and it's obvious this is a significant healthcare issue.
Dr. Sanderson had a vision of how an RFID tag could be applied to track every irreplaceable anatomic pathology specimen throughout its lifecycle, with RFID software maintaining that specimen's association to the patient, procedure and tests. With the right physics expertise and RFID software capability, he projected that labeling error rates could be nearly eliminated, and specimens would never get lost as they are tracked automatically from collection to the lab.
Was ODIN willing to get involved and do something extraordinary which, if successful, would help save lives?
Just over a year later ODIN's solution, co-developed with Mayo Clinic for the automated tracking of specimens - EasySpecimen(tm) - went live.
The results tell their own story; RFID tracking in the pathology lab drove error rates down to .002% over 100,000 specimens tested. No more handwritten labels, no more handwritten tests and of course, no more rubber bands. And most importantly, lives saved through faster, more accurate diagnosis.
It's not only a fun way to start a conversation at dinner, but it also makes me feel really good about what we are doing at ODIN. RFID is making a difference in so many places; it's fun and fulfilling to be a part of the change.