Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

First Advisor

Tsay, Li-Shiang Dr.

Abstract

In the healthcare industry, medical treatment can be a matter of life and death, so that any mistakes may cause irreversible consequences. As hospitals have sought to reduce these types of errors, Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID) has become a solution in the healthcare industry to address these problems. Since 2005, RFID has generated a lot of interest in healthcare to make simpler the identification process for tracking and managing medical resources to improve their use and to reduce the need for future costs for purchasing duplicate equipment. There are rising concerns linked to the privacy and security issues, when RFID tags are used for tracking items carried by people. A tag by its design will respond to a reader's query without the owner's consent and without the owner even noticing it. When RFID tags contain patients' personal data and medical history, they have to be protected to avoid any leaking of privacy-sensitive information. To address these concerns, we propose an Intelligent RFID System which is a RFID card system that embeds smart tags in insurance cards, medical charts, and medical bracelets to store medical information. Patient data is sent to the insurance providers by way of a clearinghouse that translates the information from the healthcare facility into a format that the insurance company can process. To ensure data protection, an additional security layer was added to secure the communication between the tags and the readers. This security layer will allow only authorized readers to poll tags for the patient's medical tags and prevent unauthorized access to tag data. It will simplify the maintenance and transfer of patient data in a secure, feasible and cost effective way.

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