IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Volume: 03 Issue: 11 | Nov-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 334 IMPLEMENTATION OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION TECHNOLOGY IN ACCESSING INFORMATION IN HOSPITALS Megha Satish 1 , Sukhwant Kaur 2 , S. K. Pandey 3 1 Student, School of Engineering and Information Technology, Manipal University, Dubai, U.A.E 2 Assistant Professor, School of Engineering and Information Technology, Manipal University, Dubai, U.A.E 3 Professor, School of Engineering and Information Technology, Manipal University, Dubai, U.A.E Abstract In today’s fast paced world with an enhancement of technology and innovation, healthcare systems have become so advanced with their technologies to monitor health variations. The prominent issue common man faces today is the number hours we spend in queues. This problem is not just for hospitals, but applies to every sector such as education, restaurants, malls, etc. Besides the issue mentioned above, there is another concern that we face with traditional filing system that are followed in many organizations. Loss of information has come into the radar of research, with the advancement of technologies and various ways to access them. Preservation and security of confidential information and data is expensive and requires skill to maintain them. Technology enhancement has made RFID technology more affordable over the years and is still a secure way to control the information and the usage of this technology hasn’t been explored enough. This system can be implemented as a module in any management system or security based system to allow or restrict access to any information. In order to resolve the above issues we integrated a database to secure confidential information with an easy and user friendly interface to be used by the hospital staff. RFID cards can control the access and manipulation of data. The application software for desktops integrates a RFID reader to enable easier access of information from the database, in this case the medical records and patient data. In this paper we describe the successful implementation and integration of the RFID reader with the application and the methodology that has been implemented to achieve a successful outcome. Keywords: Health Care, Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID), Passive and Active Tags, Low Frequency Tags, High Frequency Tags, Ultra High Frequency Tags --------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. INTRODUCTION A Hospital Information System is an element of health informatics that focuses mainly on the administrational needs of hospitals. In many implementations, a HIS is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage all the aspects of the hospitals options such as medical, administrative, financial and legal issues and the corresponding processing of services. The purpose of the application is to assist hospital staff in tracking and maintaining patient records over a period of time. Also patients can save time by not standing in long queues at the front desk to retrieve their files before seeing the doctor. Besides saving time at the hospitals, the benefits the patients can have are the consistent and updated records. This will help them review their issues with the doctors and also have secure database of their medical records. The rest of the paper is organized as follows, Section 2 gives an insight about the various types of tags and about the RFID reader. Section 3 explains the design of problem statement. Section 4 gives a brief analysis of the methodology used. Section 5 demonstrates the implementation results. Section 6 shows the issues faced during implementation of the application. Sections 7 will illustrate the future scope of the application in real world. 2. RFID READER AND TAGS 2.1 Introduction Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects. Some tags are powered by electromagnetic induction from magnetic fields produced near the reader. Other types have a local power source such as a battery and may operate at hundreds of meters from the reader [2]. RFID advantages can be briefly explained as follows:  Reader can read and write data to RFID tags without direct contact and no line of sight problem.  Data from the multiple RFID tags are accessed by the reader by radio waves.  Fast read and write with the time taken for read/write being a few milliseconds.  Modern RFID tags are made with very good memory capacities ranging from 16 - 64 Kbytes which is many times more than a typical barcode.