Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have been proposed for the tracking of medical item supplies in hospitals and the entire medical item supply chain. Such systems typically involve one or more readers and many RFID tags, each of which is associated with, such as attached to, items being monitored or tracked. In the case of pharmaceuticals, single-use medical devices, and implantable medical devices, RFID tags are typically affixed to or made part of the pharmaceutical container, e.g., medicine bottle, or medical device container, e.g., disposable packaging for the stent or orthopedic implant. In other cases, the RFID is made part of the medical item itself to allow tracking after consumption or implantation. An advantage of RFID tags is that they are stand-off readable, i.e., readable at a distance without a requirement for contact or a direct line of sight path between the reader and the tag.
RFID tags take the form of integrated circuits, with associated antennas, that encode unique serial numbers. The reader can be in a fixed location or mobile with an operator, and items with RFID tags are detected when they enter or leave the electromagnetic field of the reader. For example, RFID readers are often placed at multiple, distributed locations within a supply chain in order to monitor the items as they pass through manufacturing, transportation, distribution, storage, to consumption. Each reader captures the RFID tag serial numbers of each item as it enters the reader's interrogation field, and data collected from all readers facilitates item tracking over time, through and within the chain and within medical and storage facilities.
Another aspect of medical item management within the supply chain is handling of medical recalls. It is periodically necessary to purge supply chains of medical items that have been recalled. The recall initiators are typically governmental agencies such as the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) but also include the manufacturers of the medical items.
Systems have been proposed that prevent the dispensing of recalled medication. Examples include systems that the automatically deliver unit dose packages or medical fluids to patients. They include a recall function in which recalled products are identified to control servers, which then identify individual medication carriers that contain the recalled medication. The recalled doses of the carriers are then flagged to avoid their being dispensed to patients. In other systems, RFID tags are used to track items allowing a check to be performed before administration against recall data. Others have recognized that, when RFID tags are used to track medical items, the time required to locate products involved in a recall can be reduced.