RFID and health management: is it a good tool against system inefficiencies?

Healthcare is considered to be the biggest service industry on the planet. It is a growing industry, facing many complex challenges in trying to deliver cost-effective, high-value, accessible healthcare and has traditionally been slow to embrace new business techniques and technologies (Wickramasinghe et al. (2005) Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 1, pp. 316-334). Technology has the potential to help meet many of these challenges, thus contributing to reducing healthcare expenditure as well as offering quality healthcare treatment (Wickramasinghe, N. and Goldberg, S. (2004a) Int. J. Mobile Communications, Vol. 2, pp. 140-156; Wickramasinghe, N. and Misra, S. (2004b) Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 1, pp. 316-334). The main aim of this paper is to bring to the attention of the reader Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and to illustrating how the application of RFID in healthcare can enable this industry to overcome existing technological and workflow limitations.