Adoption possibilities and use of rfid in nigeria health sector

Thesis Overview

<p> </p><div><p>Development experts have long recognized health as an important moral and social goal. Health is also a key component of a sound development strategy, along with education, economic growth and good governance. As a form of human capital, health is essential to a productive society. Furthermore, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) project of the United Nations (UN) fully endorses the central role of health in development (Dr. L. G.Sambo, 2008). The importance of health for economic growth and reduction of poverty is reflected in the MDG. Three out of the eight goals refer directly to health. One additional goal refers to access to affordable drugs in developing countries.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The long heralding efforts and benefits harnessed from health service production and delivery cannot be distinctively separate from contributions of technologies to improvement of human lives. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID system consists of a transponder, a reader, a database and a software application for processing the collected data (TelecomSpace Telecom Tutorials).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The application of RFID technology in healthcare has been showing great potential to improve patient safety, reduce medical errors, save costs and overall contribute to the quality of care delivered to patients. In addition, the efficiency of healthcare delivery may also benefit from RFID technology. It is expected that availability of the technology, both inside and outside healthcare, will grow quickly over the coming years (RAND Europe, 2009).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>RFID can be adopted in Hospitals in Nigeria both public and private with the goal to enhance productivity, particularly, in emergency scenario. Such RFID systems are called “indoor positioning systems”. Apart from this, public hospitals can use active RFIDs for patient and personnel identification and location purposes before administrating medications (Akintola K.G., Boyinbode O.K., 2011).</p><p>Against this backdrop, adoption and implementation of the RFID system in healthcare has the potential to augment patient safety, decrease operational cost, enhance items, human tracking, and real time management of hospital equipment. Although advantage of such technology that has been deployed in countries such as USA and European countries. Despite the established potential benefit of RFID to address healthcare problems, rate of adoption in developing countries is still very low as compared to developed countries (Fakhr, 2011).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Research done to investigate the factors affecting adoption of RFID in health sector has revealed issues such as cost, return on investment, standardization, organizational, operational and environmental factors. Dong-Her Shih, et al., (2008), highlighted seven factors (Dong-Her Shih, 2008). They are operation efficiency, manufacturing efficiency and supply chain efficiency, organization context, investment cost, market environment, and technology characteristic. The existence of this cannot be underrated in the Nigerian health service delivery horizon.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It is also necessary to ascertain how users and regulators of new technology view the potential impact of RFID in the healthcare industry. Rising costs, inadequate healthcare coverage and healthcare mistakes have prompted the government to investigate ways to improve this industry. What is the likelihood that RFID could have an impact? What roles could RFID play and how might RFID change the major players in the industry (Karen Crooker et al., 2009)? These are questions from former research (es) in USA and would be considered for the Nigerian health platform.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Therefore, the onus placed on this research is to question the possibility of RFID improving health service delivery in Nigeria. It is also assigning the task to identify how the factors (hurdle and accomplishment) of RFID adoption in healthcare can be addressed to facilitate the adoption process.</p><p></p></div><h3></h3><br> <br><p></p>