Internet of things for medication control: service implementation and testing

Abstract

RFID technology (Radio Frequency IDentification) enables putting an identification label (e.g. tag) into a certain object and, by means of a reader, get the information related to it without any physical contact. The use of these tags in medical context enables a rapid and precise identification of each patient and, by means of Internet of Things (IoT), enables a ubiquitous and quick access to medical related records. These technologies, RFID and IoT, integrated within a suitable system, promote a better physician-patient interaction. A simple IoT-enabled system can send warnings to any physician, nurse or other health caregiver. Therefore, with a simple IoT architecture one may remotely monitor and control the patient's well being. This paper presents an IoT architecture, using RFID tags, able to easily and remotely establish a medication control system, beginning from physicians prescription to pharmaceutical drug administration. This paper presents the implementation and analysis of a prototype service, with a web interface, allowing for a first evaluation of the proposed service. The prototype service - based on RFID, EPC (Electronic Product Code) and ONS (Object Name Service) - and its web interface are presented and evaluated. Some use cases are presented and evaluated using this prototype service entitled "RFID-based IoT for medication control".