In the Saarbrücken Clinic, the supply of conserved blood to patients is now becoming even safer, because Siemens is equipping the bags full of life-saving donor blood with RFID chips that provide the hospital staff with precise information on each bag at all times.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a non-contact method for reading data of all types from chips. Until now, this technology has primarily been used for transporting goods. All of the information on the product (e.g. contents, origin and destination) is programmed into the small, sticker-sized plates attached to the goods. When a code on the chip is scanned, all of the data relevant to the product in question appears on the scanner’s display.

The clinic in Saarbrücken has been using this technology since 2005, when it became the first hospital in Germany to do so. Patients at the clinic are given small armbands with radio chips that enable doctors to identify them with the help of tablet PCs and prevents any mixups when prescribing medication. Siemens has been successfully using a similar RFID solution at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York since 2004. The 700-bed clinic in Saarbrücken is now expanding the system to include conserved blood, thus reducing to a minimum the risk of accidentally giving a patient the wrong blood type.

The patients’ RFID armbands contain information on each individual’s treatment. A few seconds after scanning the chip with a mobile reading device, nurses gain access to the pertinent patient file that is stored in a protected database. These files contain the details of a patient’s medical history, for example, as well as information on any medication or conserved blood that has been prescribed.

In order to prevent the wrong blood type from being used for a transfusion, the information on the bag of conserved blood is first compared with that of the recipient. The transfusion can take place only if the two sets of data match. The bag’s chip has information on the blood contained in the bag, including the blood group, origin, planned use and recipient of the contents.