Critical Evaluation of RFID Applications in Healthcare Yu-Ju Tu 1 , Huihui Chi 2 , Wei Zhou 2 , Gaurav Kapoor 3 , Enes Eryarsoy 4 , and Selwyn Piramuthu 5(B ) 1 Management Information Systems, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan 2 Information and Operations Management, ESCP Europe, Paris, France 3 Infocomm Technology, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore, Singapore 4 Information Systems, Istanbul Sehir University, Istanbul, Turkey 5 ISOM, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA selwyn@ufl.edu Abstract. The past two decades have witnessed the explosive growth of RFID-based applications in healthcare settings. This includes appli- cations that are related to ePedigree for pharmaceuticals, asset tracking and workflow management in hospitals, pervasive healthcare, among oth- ers. We consider some of the benefits that are provided by RFID-based systems in healthcare settings. We then provide a critical evaluation of some of the challenges that are faced by these applications. 1 Introduction and RFID-Based Systems in Healthcare RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags belong to a class of auto- identification technologies that also include barcode (e.g., Zhou 2009). These resource-constrained tags have minimal processing power as well as some data storage capability. Of the three main types of tags that include active tags, semi- passive tags, and passive tags, the latter is the most popular primarily because of cost and form factor reasons. Some of the characteristics of RFID tags include the ability to store and process data, being able to communicate with a reader that may not be in direct line-of-sight, durability in harsh environments, batch readability, storage of item-level information, ability to carry on a two-way con- versation with a reader, among others. The unique identifier in each RFID tag allows for uniquely identifying tagged items and the ability to communicate with a reader allows for process automation. Item-level information has been beneficially used in ePedigree systems in the pharmaceutical industry to track and trace individual items (e.g., Coustasse et al. 2010). Item-level information has also been used in hospitals to manage process flows (e.g., Gonzalez et al. 2006b), manage inventory (e.g., Meiller et al. 2011), provide automated data for electronic medical record systems (e.g., Mongan et al. 2016), facilitate patient management systems (e.g., Chowdhury and Khosla 2007), as well as other applications such as in surgical sponges (e.g., Williams et al. 2014). RFID is one of the core technologies in pervasive healthcare applications (e.g., Thuemmler et al. 2009). c  Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 R. Doss et al. (Eds.): FNSS 2019, CCIS 1113, pp. 240–248, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34353-8_18