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A study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association reports that radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs) — commonly used in security cards, blood bag tags and even surgical sponges — may cause ventilators and other lifesaving hospital equipment to malfunction. Researchers from the Netherlands tested the effect two types of RFIDs had on 41 kinds of medical equipment, including pacemakers, mechanical ventilators, defibrillators, monitors and anesthesia devices.
The tests were conducted at varying distances in a one-bed, patient-free room in an intensive-care unit.
Out of 123 tests for electromagnetic interference between RFIDs and medical devices, 34 instances of interference occurred. In those cases, the midpoint between reader and device was less than a foot. Among the hazardous incidences, a mechanical ventilator switched off, a syringe pump stopped, and an external pacemaker malfunctioned.The study authors were not surprised by the results. “We suspected there would be interference,” says co-author Erik Jan van Lieshout, a critical-care physician at the Academic Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The RFID cheerleaders want to chip everything, including you, your money, credit cards, pets etc. We all have to live in this EMF cloud. And there are always those who will deny anything they cant see.
It’s time for this whole turning off your cell phone bullshit to end. I unfortunately have been forced to spend massive amounts of times in hospitals recently, no one, including doctors and nurses shut off their phones. There are thousands of cell phones on in hospitals every single day and there have been no incidents as a result.
I’m also getting kind of tired of the anti RFID hysteria. Yes there are privacy issues but it’s getting to the point where every time RFID is mentioned people freak out. This article is great example of it.
So I guess designing better medical equipment that is shielded from interference is out of the question, right?
#1–Rider==are you saying the article’s findings aren’t true, or that having ventilators turn off is not as important as having everything RFID’d?
I wanted to ask about the “nature of” the interference. I thought RFID’s were passive but I guess they must emit a return wave of information when they get pinged? So–isn’t this just an issue of frequency assignment or is soemthing else at play?
And being the “active emitters” they are, wouldn’t cell phones be very dangerous unless they are on a very specific wave band?
Anyone know?
I’m with #2 Market Man. Hospital equipment manufacturers need to enter the real world. Their products do not operate in a vacuum. The hospital is full of computers, cell phones, RFID tags, iPods, walkie-talkies, other medical equipment… It’s ludicrous to expect ALL other electronics manufacturers to shield themselves or be turned off, for the sake of a few manufacturers that can’t be bothered to shield their products. If your product is so freaking life-critical, for heaven’s sake, SHIELD THE DAMN THINGS!
RFID’s are passive. They don’t do anything unless a reader transmits radio waves. So the problem is not RFID. The problem are transmitters, which is also what a cell phone does.
The solution is to properly shield electronics that will impacted by transmitters. The more critical the device, the more need for shielding.
RFID readers are here to stay. So are cell phones, Microwaves, WiFi, Bluetooth, WII controllers, and other wireless tech. Any device can malfunction and transmitted in the wrong frequency, or wrong power range.
For an excellent example of this, read this article [ http://tinyurl.com/4f875l ]about the FCC’s investigation into why marine GPS navigation systems were failing in the sea port of Moss Landing outside of Monterey, California. It cause turned out to be cheap, Chinese made TV reception “boosters” being used by a couple of live-aboards on fishing boats. These “booster” where actually transmitting static on the GPS frequency and overwhelming the GPS signals. All because some fisherman wanted to watch American Idol.
OK.. I made that last sentence up. The don’t say what TV shows these fisherman wanted to receive on board.
Respirators being effected by the passive architecture of most RFID tags/chips does not make sense.
#6. Not the devil but they are developing cancers in the area of the implant. Take that damn thing out of your dog, James.
Boboo:
Yep sorry don’t buy any of it for one second. If these findings were true this would be happening all time. It would be on the news every single day. There would massive class action law suits.
My house is full sensitive electronic equipment. How many times have you seen something as simple as a radio wave make something turn itself off?
If a piece of life support equipment is that fragile and sensitive then it’s the fault of the equipment itself not RFIDs which put out signals so small they can’t be read from more then a few feet away.
As I pointed out they have been making this claim for years about cell phones. Everyone totally ignores the rule, where are all the news stories about people dieing from cell phone use in hospitals.
Think about all the electronic devices that people have carried on them for years. Hell some of the paramedics and doctors probably have close to a dozen electronic devices on them, radios, pagers, cell phones, thermometers…
hell a good number of hospitals use RFIDs on patients, where are all the tragic deaths?
#9. I agree, and while were at it, people need to shut the fuck up about germs. Thats right, I dont see any, and they dont exist. Why if germs were killing people, you’d be hearing about that all the time. Staph infections in hospitals….its another myth, thats right, I said it. Doctors should stop washing their hands, cause there is just no proof. Everybody needs to quit questioning these things, and just let whatever happens happen. Stop wasting my time with these so-called “studies”.
Hmmm… I should pass this news to several friends who have RFID chips injected into them.
#9–Rider==you seem to be saying “Its not happening all the time so==either the study is wrong, or the number of deaths is not sufficient to study.” Well, thats one position, entirely emotionally driven and hypocritical as well.
My take away is that when new technology like RFID comes along, critical hospital equipment manufacturers need to assure their circuitry is safe from stray signals for example from RFIDs. I assume frequency/bandwidth assignments would get most of the job done before shielding even comes into play?
Why wouldn’t the shielding protecting this equipment against almost all electronic devices in use also shield against RFID?
Bobbo you are assuming this new technology. Hospitals have been using RFIDs for years and no incidents. Read the literature, cell phones showed the same things in tests.
Also this could all be solved with proper shielding which you would assume life support systems would have anyway. Seriously 1$ worth of copper mesh from home depot is all it takes to stop RFID.
This stuff plan and simple just dose not happen in the real world.
Rider–I’m asking for the info==aren’t hospital machines already shielded? I also assume there is more than one kind of RFID? I used to see all kinds of bar coding in hospitals–not so much RFID, so I assume that is “relatively new”
I’ve always been kind of skeptical of these sorts of claims for three reasons:
1. EMF shielding is trivial and has been since Michael Faraday’s day. The FCC generally requires anything with the potential for interference or being interfered by to be shielded. This is why your computer case is built the way it is.
2. Doctors never turn off their cell phones and pagers, and frequently make phone calls from the hospital corridors where I am forbidden from doing so.
3. The freakin world is filled with EMF signals. It is almost impossible to find a location for doing radio astronomy any more. If this were a big problem, we should see random events occurring even when cell phones are all silent.
I would have to cry foul on this study. I wish they had a link to it in the posting.
I have worked for the last 20 years as a Biomed tech with manufacturers and inhouse. I have never heard of ANY incidents of interference with any reasonably modern medical devices. How can a mechanical ventilator be turned of by a tiny RF signal??? Did they bump the off switch with the RFID reader and consider that interference?
If a third of the medical devices out there were malfuctioning because of RF interference, then hundreds of patients a day would be dropping dead. I ain’t heard of no such thing happening.
Don
Then, I guess we cant trust the JAMA Report, great, is there a better source?
They want 15 bux to read the article. Not from me.
I still feel if it was that significant, then there would be a trail of bodies.
Did they prescreen the devices and rule out some that would not register so their report would sound more ominous? They only seem to report the number of tests that “failed”, not the number of devices that failed. If 1 device failed all 3 tests, then that would skew the results and make for a more sensational headline. The report is from Europe. Did they use all EU designs, or from all over the world.
Right now,it just leaves me with alot of questions. I’m glad I am getting out of the Medical Industry.
Don
#14, bobbo,
Shielding is never 100% perfect. Usually with well shielded equipment the stray EMF is in the several decimal point range, but it is still there. Commonly this is called “noise”. Your question should not be “if”, but “how well”.
It has been too many years since I studied this (and that was back when college kids always tried to see how many brain cells they could destroy) but shielding is almost as much an art as science. We did one paper where we tested various emissions by using a standard AC plug-in AM radio. We rated the test subjects by how close the radio needed to be in order to hear a “click” when the item was turned on. Our subjects included everyday things around the house such as stoves, furnaces, clothes dryers, TVs, and lights. Electric motors were the worst, or noisiest, which is another reason they are enclosed in metal cabinets.
#20–Gawd==thanks.
Yea, I’m gonna go with the flow here. Maybe patient death by cell phones are being covered up by doctor’s mistakes but I’d think equipment turning off by itself for unknown reasons would get pretty quick attention, and such hasn’t been the case.