How sensor technology works with RFID to manage blood.

RFID now is getting fused with sensor technology. This technology advancement would create a Sensing Network that can be sensed atany time anywhere, which brings a new opportunity to medical management, especially for blood management.

The general process of blood management is as follows: volunteer registration→physical checking→blood sample testing→blood collection→blood bank storage→blood management→blood delivery→blood application (or other blood-basedproducts processing). During the process, there is basically with big data information involved in, including volunteer’s info, blood type, collection time and location, handler and etc. This would make it hard to keep everything strictly correct without any mistake. Plus blood is kind of matter that easily gone bad, provided the environmental conditions are not good, blood quality canbe affected. Thus, it’s critical to ensure real-time monitoring during itsstorage and transportations. Good news is the combined technology of RFID and sensor could be the solution to the problem of blood management.

RFID technology issues and verifies the unique identification for each bag of blood. At the same, relevant information stored in it, which linked to the backend database. Therefore, the blood can be monitored by the RFID system in the whole process, whether at the blood collection point, the blood bank at the transfer point, or the hospital at the use point. The information of the blood at each transfer point can be tracked at any time. In the past, the outflow of blood was time-consuming and laborious, and manual information verification was needed before use. After the adoption of RFID technology, real-time data collection, transmission, verification, and update could be carried out inlarge quantities without precise positioning, which accelerated the outflow ofblood identification and avoided the errors frequently occurred in manual verification. The non-contact identification characteristics of RFID can also ensure that the blood will not be contaminated under the conditions ofidentification and detection, reduce the possibility of blood contamination, itis not affected by dust, stains, low temperature, and so on, and it can bestored in the special environmental conditions of blood to keep working normally.

Sensing technology is a window for sensing, acquiring, and detecting information. Itcan realize data acquisition and quantization, processing and fusion, as wellas transmission application. The real-time monitoring and collection of theambient temperature, sealing condition and oscillation degree of the bloodthrough sensors, and the timely processing and response of the sensoryinformation through the system, which can effectively avoid the deteriorationof blood and ensure the quality of blood.

The integration of RFID and sensing technology, the use of RFID sensor tags thatcan not only improve the identification efficiency, realize information tracking, but also carry out real-time monitoring of the quality of items, thatcan truly achieve intelligent information management of blood.