Bhargav Raman BS, Presenter: Nothing to Disclose

Raghav Raman MD, Abstract Co-Author: Nothing to Disclose

Raman Venkatraman BEng, MBA, Abstract Co-Author: President, MedPixels

Terry S. Desser MD, Abstract Co-Author: Nothing to Disclose

Our RFID conference attendance system has resulted in a significant reduction in administrative overhead to keep track of attendance at resident conferences. In a production environment, it has shown itself to be easily implemented, reliable and efficient. 

For maintenance of residency program accreditation, ACGME requires that residents' attendance at educational conferences be tracked. The current manual system is inefficient and time intensive for the residency coordinator. We sought to develop an automated system for recording and tallying resident conference attendance. An RFID tag reader (Phidgets Inc., Alberta, Canada) was installed on a computer in our main conference room. Residents carried a keychain, credit card or sticker containing a battery less RFID chip with a short range antenna (4-6 inches) powered by the RF energy emitted by the reader. It was RF silent unless within range of the reader, avoiding RF interference with hospital equipment. Residents could also click their name on a web interface on the computer, if they did not have a RFID. Attendance records were stored on a MSSQL database (Microsoft, Redmond, WA). A management web interface provided reports of attendance grouped by resident for specific time periods. The residents could retroactively sign in for conferences over the preceding 2 weeks using the web interface. The mode of signing in (on-site versus off-site) was also logged to ensure that residents used on-site sign-in in the majority of cases.

A total of 569 conferences have been tracked using this system since October 2006. A total of 8715 sign-in events have been processed. A total of 45 residents have used this system since implementation. Total system uptime has been 99.9% based on uptime logs kept by the server. Off-site sign in comprised 6% of total attendance events.

Our use of "silent" RFIDs requires each resident to physically sign-in by waving the RFID or clicking on the web interface. Improvements in RFID range may alleviate this problem in the future. To address privacy and security concerns, RFIDs did not store any personal information, were short range and voluntary to use.  

Raman, B, Raman, R, Venkatraman, R, Desser, T, Paperless Radiology Residency Conference Attendance Tracking Using Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) Technology.  Radiological Society of North America 2008 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, February 18 - February 20, 2008 ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2008/6019679.html