Singapore’s National Healthcare Group (NHG) of hospitals has awarded a contract to systems solutions provider TCM-RFiD to implement a pharmaceutical tracking and management system that is to operate by the second quarter of this year.

The system has been named the Intelligent Medicine Dispensing System (i-MDS). It will help staff ensure proper administration of drugs to patients.

The system, which contains Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and readers, custom workflow software, electronic medical records and a central database, will initially be deployed on more than 300 Motorola MC50 and MC70 enterprise digital assistants (EDA) at two NHG hospitals.

The EDAs are handheld mobile communications devices linked to back-end electronic medical records via wireless technology and Wi-Fi networks. Data transferred via the EDAs is fully encrypted.

The devices can be used by doctors, nurses and pharmacies to scan both RFID-enabled and bar-coded wristbands unique to each patient. RFID is a technology that transmits the identity (in the form of a unique serial number) of a person or object via radio waves.

Doctors and nurses can then view patient records and input new information such as changes to prescriptions or patients’ allergies in real time. The system can also automatically send prescriptions to pharmacists. All medical data is stored in a central database accessible only to qualified healthcare professionals.

i-MDS is expected to improve workflow management in the hospital by reducing the need to sift through paper files. Healthcare staff could then put the time saved towards providing better quality patient care.