ICT to improve safety, traceability and reliability of clinical processes with quality assurance issues: The case of stem cells

Traceability and quality assurance of bedside processes are often still manual, without the appropriate support of information systems. Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) solutions integrated with Mobile & Wireless devices are key solutions to meet the needs of secure identification of persons and items and of traceability of processes in healthcare organizations. These technologies can fit a variety of processes, like enterprise-wide person/item identification, blood transfusions, surgical samples identification, therapy management. The challenge is to extend the use of these solutions also to other processes like biobanking, where stem cellular products require strict procedures of collection and manipulation, even in critical environmental conditions. Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan (Italy) has a wide experience in RFId projects and is starting to lead a project aimed to design, develop and implement a set of organizational models, acknowledged procedures and ICT tools in order to improve actual support to collection and transplantation of Human Stem Cells. In this paper we present a literature overview of cases of implementation of AIDC technology solution and of how its character of ubiquity and versatility could fit well with process requirements, discussing the Istituto's business case.