Bio barcodes

The same technology used by your garage-door clicker may one day save your life. Known as radio frequency identification or RFID, the technology is used in everything from the Turnpike's FastLane transponders to "keyless entry" swipe cards, and is often called a next-generation barcode.

Recently, a couple of local medical startups have brought RFID into hospitals to help track emergency room ventilators and IV pumps, locate doctors in critical situations, and ensure that patients aren't brought to the wrong place or just lost in the shuffle.

The Lawrence-based Radianse began working with Massachusetts General Hospital to integrate RFID into its "OR of the Future" nearly three years ago. This spring the hospital started expanding the system to intensive care units and other areas. Radianse also partnered with Brigham and Women's Hospital, which began tagging medical equipment with RFID late last year. Meanwhile, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has been using an RFID indoor-positioning system by Framingham's PanGo Networks to pinpoint medical equipment in its emergency department since last fall and has been expanding the system into some of the hospital's operating rooms over the summer.

Both companies make use of "active" RFID--small, battery-powered chips that broadcast basic identifying information from inside a patient's wristband or a tag attached to medical equipment. The radio frequency signals are picked up either by special wall-mounted receivers (Radianse) or an existing Wi-Fi system (PanGo) and are then relayed to the hospital's computer network, allowing the tagged patients, doctors, or equipment to be tracked in real-time on a hospital floor plan.

Earlier this year, Beth Israel ER doctor and chief information officer John Halamka took the new technology a step further and volunteered to have an RFID chip injected into his arm. The chip, made by Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions, contains a personalized 16-digit code. While the necessary infrastructure of scanners and databases has yet to be built, theoretically, if Halamka were ever an incapacitated patient, the code could be read by a special scanner and used to access his medical records.