Dubai students come to the aid of hospitals

Students of the University of Dubai’s (UD) Information Technology Centre have come up with yet another novel way of adapting the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags to a hospital situation.

In the past, the UD students conducted very successful capstone projects using this technology such as the MUAWEN project with RTA and inventory system with Dubai Police and wireless sensor network for environment monitoring of paper rolls with a printing company in Abu Dhabi. (The RFID technology is also used in Salik sticker).

But now, four students from UD – Yousef A Najjar, Abdel Aziz Ibrahim, Ahmad Ali and Salim Seif - have come up with the idea of using these stickers to be placed on hospital equipment and in patient bracelets, supplies, etc., as part of the submission for their Capstone project at the College of Information and Technology at UD.

The project, executed for the Canadian Hospital, Dubai, extended the use of RFID transmission in a hospital situation. When implemented, the information provided by the RFID tags linked to a computer, will provide the hospital employees details about, for example, what equipment might be required for surgery, the blood type for a patient waiting for transfusion and the kind of medical supplies currently in stock.

Professor Sami Miniaoui, who supervised the project, explained the rationale of the study and his role in guiding the students: ”The University of Dubai established an RFID and Wireless Sensor Networking Lab to run projects and support research in these domains.

The students were encouraged to find a valuable and useful application for these technologies that can serve the UAE society and economy. I initiated and guided them to the emergent RFID technology, and we discussed some useful features they can develop in this system and how they can make it feasible,” he says.

One semester ago, the students showed an interest in undertaking a project under his supervision, mainly using an emerging technology such as Radio frequency identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC) or Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN).

“I asked them to explore the domain and the willingness of the market to use such technology in the medical domain,” says Prof Miniaoui. “So they interviewed many stakeholders (patients, doctors, hospital managers, nurses). The result of the interview’s data analysis was very supportive to this idea and showed that there is a lack of technology for managing internal operations of hospitals which could reduce human intervention and thus help avoid human errors.”

Prof. Miniaouni feels that if there is a support from the government, it would automatically help convert such projects for commercial application. “That is why we have established a centre of research and consultancy in UD that I am managing which aims to leverage these projects. But we still need financial support to buy equipment and conduct interviews, which are an intrinsic part of such research projects.”

The students, thrilled about the successful completion of the project, spoke to Education. 

How did you come up with the idea of creating the RFID sticker/chip?

As our Capstone project’s semester was getting closer, we were considering a whole bunch of ideas that were brewing in our heads. Finally, we were inspired to develop a project that serves the healthcare sector and helps improve its facilities. The RFID technology is one of the most powerful technologies. A lot of industries involving information technology still do not fully utilise this technology with regard to its applications. 

How familiar were you with the RFID technology?

We have known about it for some time and have seen it being used for different purposes at the RTA and the Dubai Police. 

Is the chip expensive or cost-effective? If expensive, will the patient have to bear the cost?

One of the project’s major outcomes is that this system is cost-efficient for hospitals in many ways. Plus, it translates into tangible cost-effectiveness. The patient’s treatment is not compromised due to this cost-efficiency as he won’t have to bear any costs. 

Have you thought of patenting this technology (in hospital equipment)?

We are working on it. 

Any commercial angle linked to the use of the technology?

If this technology is applied at the hospital, there should be a lot of rewards and returns such as: time efficiency, accuracy, minimising error rates, cost efficiency, and better performance. It would decrease human intervention in many processes which will reduce errors, add more controls and accuracy to processes such as blood transfusion, blood banking and surgical items management.

It is a breakthrough project that we already presented to the Silicon Oasis incubator in Dubai and have got very good feedback. We are working closely with them to position the project as a commercial product they can present to an investor. Luckily, we can get a licence in DSO to operate as an IT start-up. The bottomline is, patients will be more comfortable to be in a hospital that harnesses this kind of a technology. 

What will the adaptation of this technology mean to your career?

It means a lot to us. And we hope to find sponsors who will support us to implement our project on a broader scale in the world.