JAMA Report Lends Credibility to Sonitor’s Technology

Sonitor’s Ultrasound RTLS for hospitals (USID) does not have EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) risks as reported by JAMA for RFID based technologies.

A JAMA article published on June 25, 2008 and referenced by the media today, highlights serious issues with Radio Frequency (RF) based location and tracking devices in a hospital environment as found by the recent study by Remko van der Togt at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The referenced study indicated that the operation of a relatively high number of medical devices was disturbed through interference caused by the RF field emitted by the RFID tags or infrastructure.


The findings were based on a test of 41 medical devices were all 41 medical devices were submitted to 3 EMI tests resulting in 123 EMI tests. The study shows that “A total of 34 EMI incidents were found; 22 were classified as hazardous, 2 as significant, and 10 as light. Hazardous incidents included: total switch-off and change in set ventilation rate of mechanical ventilators; complete stoppage of syringe pumps; malfunction of external pacemakers; complete stoppage of renal replacement devices, and interference in the atrial and ventricular electrogram curve read by the pacemaker programmer.”

See press release.


This study reinforces Sonitor’s ultrasound technology, and lends credibility to its proprietary Real Time Location Solution (RTLS).


"Ten years ago, the scientists at Sonitor Technologies concluded that the use of RF technology for tracking and positioning of equipment, people and charts should be avoided in a healthcare environment because of the serious risk of electromagnetic interference with sensitive medical equipment." says Dr. Wilfred Booij, CTO of Sonitor Technologies. "This was a key reason for why Sonitor Technologies set out and developed a positioning and tracking solution based on (non-RF) Ultrasound signals. Ultrasound signals inherently do not cause interference with medical equipment since ultrasound signal are acoustical pressure waves just as ordinary sound. - And as we all know sound does not interfere with medical equipment."


Full press release (PDF)

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