Students

Ramgopal Rajan is pursuing a Masters of Engineering in Telecommunications (MET) at the University of Toronto, and participated in the IPSI common seminar program in the Fall of 2007. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications (EXTC) from the University of Mumbai in 2003. After graduation, he worked with Wipro Technologies, a leading software services company in India, for three and half years.

Under the supervision of Professor Dimitris Hatzinakos and Professor Kostas Plataniotis, Ramgopal is currently working on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in patient and medication tracking. The focus of the project is to look into the implementation of RFID to improve inpatient treatment and medication efficiencies in the health care system. The project concentrates on three wireless transmission technologies – WiFi, Bluetooth and ZigBee – to analyze their applicability to patient tracking. The other aspect of the project is to develop specifications for a generic patient and medication tracking system for hospitals.

Hospitals around the world experience inefficiencies due to manual operations. Currently, automation by RFID is being considered as an alternative to manual work to improve efficiency of operations. This would result in a better overall experience for the patients and efficient data management for staff. With a wireless, non-line-of-sight implementation, the RFID system can prove to be an excellent patient tracking tool. Additionally, RFID tags can also be used to secure the entire pharmaceutical supply chain and prevent circulation of illegal drugs.