Birmingham Heartlands and Solihull NHS Trust plans to cut surgery errors and reduce waiting times by electronically tagging patients.

The radio-tagging scheme will help to ensure that errors such as medics administering the wrong drugs, accessing incorrect records and operating on the wrong patient do not occur.

The Safe Surgical System, being trialled in the Trust's ear, nose and throat department, is also reducing paperwork and the time it takes to access records, allowing surgeons to carry out six more operations a day.

'Some 15 per cent of errors in hospitals are from misidentification in surgery,' David Morgan, consultant ear, nose, throat surgeon at Birmingham Heartlands hospital, told Computing.

Patients with infectious diseases will also be tagged to minimise the spread of illnesses.

'The patients get RFID tags upon admission and an electronic photo is taken which is kept on the server,' said Morgan.

The system, developed by suppliers Daconi and Intelligent Medical Microsystems, stores the digital photo on a central database. When patients arrive in a specific part of the hospital the WiFi tags from supplier Ekahau are detected by Proxim wireless access points, automatically triggering the patient's photograph, medical records and location on clinicians' PDAs, tablet PCs and monitors.

This provides medical staff with the latest records at the same time, reducing errors that can creep in when paper-based records are distributed and updated.

'Litigation costs are starving the NHS of funds,' said Morgan. 'Our current paper process is error prone, and technology such as the Safe Surgical System is now available to reduce human error and improve operating room theatre efficiency.'

Added security from Daconi and Proxim ensures that hackers and unauthorised employees cannot access records.

'The new system is meeting our expectations and is helping us improve patient safety while improving efficiency,' said Morgan. 'This could translate into saving more lives, reducing costs and improving the patient experience.'

The hospital is considering expanding the scheme into 10 more operating theatres and surgical wards.