RFID, TNO, Sonitor… and a potential conflict of interest?

Jen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:38:06 +0000

Commenter follow_the_ money had the following to say on my June 24th post about a JAMA article raising questions about the safety of RFID in hospitals (reprinted from comment section):

“this appears to be waiting for a good reporter

The “TNO Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, Leiden” is listed as one of the “Author Affiliations” for the RFID study (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/299/24/2884).

A recent announcement (May 2008) was made regarding strengthened collaboration between TNO and Sintef, another research organization in Europe similar to TNO (http://www.mwjournal.com/search/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_5758&SearchWord=TNO) .

Wilfred Booij is a senior scientist at Sintef.

Wilfred Booij is also CTO of “Sonitor Technologies”.

What does Sonitor Technologies do? They have a competing technology to RFID for real-time location systems which they are pushing in healthcare.They are heralding the study on their website as validation of their own technology, saying “JAMA report lends credibility to Sonitor’s Technology” (http://www.sonitor.com/)”

With all of the news about conflict of interest lately, I thought I’d take a look into this matter.

The authors of the study were:

Remko van der Togt, MSc; Erik Jan van Lieshout, MD; Reinout Hensbroek, MSc; E. Beinat, PhD; J. M. Binnekade, PhD; P. J. M. Bakker, MD, PhD

Let’s see what their affiliations are.

Spatial Information Laboratory, Institute of Environmental Studies, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Mr van der Togt and Dr Beinat); Department of Intensive Care and Mobile Intensive Care Unit (Drs van Lieshout and Binnekade), Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics (Dr Binnekade), and Department of Quality Assurance and Innovation (Dr Bakker), Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam; TNO Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, Leiden, the Netherlands(Mr Hensbroek); and Faculty of Sciences, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria (Dr Beinat).

TNO Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research has a Wikipedia page here if you’re interested (TNO = Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek, or “Applied Scientific Research”) TNO and SINTEF did indeed sign an agreement earlier this year:

“The leading research organizations TNO (the Netherlands) and SINTEF (Norway) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop and market their joint services on a number of fields of technology.”

I checked out Wilfred Booij’s profile on LinkedIn, and he does have affiliations with SINTEF and Sonitor. Here is a screen shot:

Even more interesting, Booij is quoted as discussing the superiority of Sonitor’s technology to RFID, and he speaks directly about the JAMA report:

“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.”

My verdict? Definitely a little fishy. I think that this merits further investigation… if anyone else finds some interesting stuff, post it in the comments!