IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 54

mobile micropayment system once
the identity of the patient and the
patient record is reconciled at the
database. The central medical facility
can ensure that the payment system
is efficient and prompt. The assumption is that a mobile micropayment
system is already in place and that
cellular coverage is available at the
location of the transaction.
As the core competence of the
central medical facility may not be in
managing wide area RFID communication equipment and infrastructure,
opportunities may exist for partnership between the medical facility and
a communication service provider,
such as a local mobile operator, to
provide and manage the mobile RFID
read/write devices. This may open
up possibilities for overlaying other
information services for supporting
the community healthcare workers.
In addition, it may also be possible
to create commercially sponsorship
opportunities, such as in the form of
"push advertisements" to the mobile
RFID read/write device, providing
value added information to enhance
the healthcare services.

Community
Healthcare
Worker

Patient

Beginning of Field Transaction
Interrogate RFID Card
Identity Data of Patient

Identity Data of Patient
Confirm Patient Identity

Payment of Fee to Central Medical Facility
Send Paid to Healthcare Worker
Send Medical Record

Close of Field Transaction
Update RFID Card

Submit Record Update

Figure 13. RFID system with payment integration.

In addition, community healthcare workers may also
have direct access to a helpline linking them to more
experienced medical professionals or experts at the
central facility via mobile communications. This will
enable the central facility to answer specific queries,
offer urgent medical advice, and set up specialist referrals. Telemedicine is a potential extension that can add
value to the system and also improve efficiency.
Some kind of workflow management backend facility may also be implemented at the central medical
facility to optimize and monitor the activities of community healthcare workers. This can help ensure the
quality of healthcare provide across the community by
different workers.
Another enhancement could be to integrate a mobile
micropayment system [13] with the RFID system to
enable the transfer of patient fees to the central medical
facility and also between the healthcare worker and the
facility. This is depicted in Fig. 13. Using micropayments,
the patient can pay the central medical facility directly
through a personal mobile phone. The central facility
will confirm the payment and transfer a portion of the
fund to the community healthcare worker through the

Cost Optimization
Underserved communities in emerging markets are usually highly cost sensitive. In order to optimize for the
cost structure of the system, several measures can be
put in place to create savings.
The sharing of mobile devices and RFID read/write
devices between multiple healthcare workers can help
maximize the utilization of equipment. All healthcare
workers will not be operational at all times, and if different workers can use the same pool of equipment when
others are not using it, this would put the equipment
to full use. Effectively this amounts to reducing the
overall cost of the scheme and would be ideal from the
cost efficiency perspective. However equipment sharing
or pooling frequently leads to issues associated with
responsibility and accountability in looking after the
shared equipment.
As children and infants are frequently associated
with adults, they may not be issued with individual
RFID cards, but may be assigned to their respective
adults for pediatric care. This can reduce the number
of RFID cards issued and the chances of cards being
lost by children. A similar concept can be extended to

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

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MARCH 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015