Radiofrequency Identification Chips and Tags for Healthcare Products

Publication Summary

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is being implemented in the supply chain of many businesses and organizations to enhance tracking, improve logistics, manage inventories, reduce theft, and decrease delay. This is typically done by adding RFID labels (chips and antennas attached to a substrate) to packaging at the case or pallet level and by adding multiple RFID readers at locations in the supply chain. The readers can identify the location of the cases or pallets as they move in a supply chain, allowing information about location and movement to be recorded in central databases and used in a variety of software systems. Item-level tagging of products has been used for many specialized applications, but is far from ubiquitous, largely due to the cost of adding RFID tags to individual items. An area of potential opportunity future item-level RFID tagging is the health care sector, where tracking and verifying the status of individual items may offer significant value. Here we propose that a health care facility such as a hospital, clinic, or nursing home can benefit from incorporating an RFID system featuring in-house RFID readers for reading RFID tags at the item-level. RFID labels may be added to these items, or RFID tags (chip plus antenna) may be incorporated into the product itself.

Country	United States
Language	English (United States)
Related Person(s)	(AUTHOR)  Jeff Lindsay (AUTHOR)  Henry Griesbach (AUTHOR)  Dan Pike (AUTHOR)  John Onderko
Copyright	Copyright © 2006, Kimberly-Clark Worldwide

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Radiofrequency Identification Chips and Tags for Healthcare Products

J. Lindsay, H. Griesbach, D. Pike, and J. Onderko Kimberly-Clark Corporation Neenah, Wisconsin

Introduction

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is being implemented in the supply chain of many businesses and organizations to enhance tracking, improve logistics, manage inventories, reduce theft, and decrease delay. This is typically done by adding RFID labels (chips and antennas attached to a substrate) to packaging at the case or pallet level and by adding multiple RFID readers at locations in the supply chain. The readers can identify the location of the cases or pallets as they move in a supply chain, allowing information about location and movement to be recorded in central databases and used in a variety of software systems. Item-level tagging of products has been used for many specialized applications, but is far from ubiquitous, largely due to the cost of adding RFID tags to individual items. An area of potential opportunity future item-level RFID tagging is the health care sector, where tracking and verifying the status of individual items may offer significant value.

Here we propose that a health care facility such as a hospital, clinic, or nursing home can benefit from incorporating an RFID system featuring in-house RFID readers for reading RFID tags at the item-level. RFID labels may be added to these items, or RFID tags (chip plus antenna) may be incorporated into the product itself.

Background

Previous publications and patents discuss a variety of uses of RFID in health care settings. Particularly well known is the use of RFID to tag patients. For example, the RFID-enabled wristbands of Precision Dynamics Corporation (San Fernando, California) are commercially marketed for hospital use (see, for example, US Pat. No. 6,888,502, "Microstrip Antenna for an Identification Appliance," issued May 3, 2005 to Beigel et al. and US Pat. No. 5,973,598, "Radio Frequency Identification Tag on Flexible Substrate," Oct. 26, 1999, to Beigel et al.). RFID has also been proposed for assisting in tracking patient data and in administering proper treatments to patients. See, for example, WO 2004/088567, "Infusion Data Communication System," published Oct. 14, 2004 by Butterfield and Schlotterbeck. RFID has also been used to improve handling of medications to ensure, for example, that they are not administered after their expiration date or to the wrong patient. See, for example, WO 2003/044521A1, published May 30, 2003 by Smolander et al. and US Pat. No. 6,935,560, "Systems and Methods for Tracking Pharmaceuticals within a Facility," issued Aug. 30, 2005 to Andreasson and Caputo. General tracking of articles in medical environments has also been proposed. See, for example, US20050088305A1, "Identification Apparatus," published April 28, 2005 by Greene and Rahim.

Examples of RFID-enabled methods for tracking and orderi...

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