Item Traceability Meets Human Traceability: Implications and Case Study

The increasing attention by hospital and health bodies towards the issues related to devices, medical staff and patients identification and traceability is leading to the introduction of innovative systems, able to ensure access to medical reporting devices and, in the meantime, to guarantee the expected levels in terms of efficiency, configurability and upgradeability. Commercial solutions often do not satisfy these needs and cannot manage some important security issues in an efficient way. This paper presents a case study exploiting the RFID technologies and the EPCglobal standard for medical staff traceability in a real hospital context. Moreover, we present an implementation based on the Fosstrak framework, able to collaborate with an authentication system for digital signature on a Smart Card, satisfying timely intervention requirements and medical instrumentation data recording needs.