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Some of the microchip-based “smart” systems are touted as improving patient safety, but a Dutch study of equipment — without the patients — suggests the systems could actually cause harm.

A U.S. patient-safety expert related the study “is of urgent significance” and said hospitals should respond proximately to the “disturbing” results.

The wireless systems jaculate out radio waves that be able to interfere through apparatus such as respirators, external pacemakers and kidney dialysis machines, according to the study.

Researchers discovered the problem in 123 tests they performed in an intensive-care one at an Amsterdam hospital. Patients were not using the equipment at the time.

Electromagnetic glitches occurred in almost 30 percent of the tests when microchip devices similar to those in many types of wireless medical equipment were placed within about one add a foot of of the lifesaving machines.

Nearly 20 percent of the cases involved hazardous malfunctions that would apparently damage patients. These included breathing machines that switched from; involuntary syringe pumps that stopped delivering medication; and external pacemakers, which regulate the heart, that malfunctioned.

The wireless systems are used to tag and keep track of medical equipment like heart-testing machines, combined replacements and surgical staplers. They can help quickly fix the boundaries of devices that are elsewhere in the hospital and help prevent theft.

The technology also is viewed as a way to prevent remedy counterfeiting, by embedding microchips in drug containers, and to stop harmful medical errors by keeping tabs on devices used for the period of surgery.

The results show that it’s crucial as far as concerns hospitals to test their wireless items in advance of using them around equipment essential for keeping patients alive, said Dr. Erik Jan van Lieshout, a study co-author and critical care specialist at the University of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Center.

His study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Attention must exist paid to these disturbing findings,” Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said in an editorial in the journal.

“It seems that hospitals, regulators, and manufacturers certainly have some present work to do,” including examining whether similar problems are occurring in hospital critical care units, Berwick said.

Peper Long, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, before-mentioned the agency is cognizant of the potential puzzle but has not received any reports of injuries directly caused by electronic interference through hospital medical devices.

She said the FDA is testing more medical devices to “determine their vulnerability and to what extent so vulnerability may bring forth being a public health establishment.”

Previous studies have shown that pacemakers and implanted heart defibrillators are susceptible to interference from enclosed space phones and metal detectors outside hospital settings, according to the FDA’s Web site. The Dutch study focused only on devices and equipment used in hospitals.

“It is absolutely every issue, but you have to manage around it,” said Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Beth Israel uses the technology for identification and tracking purposes, including microchips embedded in intravenous pumps and ventilators.

Halamka before-mentioned the devices are compatible with the hospital’s wireless netting and that all new machines are evaluated in the van of being used near other electronic medical devices. He aforesaid there have been no examples of harmful interference at Beth Israel.

The JAMA editorial said hospitals should consider surveillance for intermeddling problems that employees place of safety’t noticed or reported. Regulatory agencies also should determine if new safeness government is needed, the editorial recommended.

ClearCount Medical Solutions of Pittsburgh is marketing its strange microchip-embedded surgical “smart” sponges. They respond to scanning wands to help doctors make sure sponges aren’t left within patients.

Co-founder Steven Fleck declared the sponges were designed not to interfere by other hospital equipment and were approved by FDA last year.

David Palmer, ClearCount’s chief executive officer, said these systems can improve patient safety and that as being hospitals to reject such technology for the cause that of the new study report “would be shortsighted.” JAMA:

FDA: