Making RFID Safe, Practical for Healthcare
BY LAUREN UZDIENSKI, DECEMBER 20, 2006
Controversial RFID (radio frequency identification) technology can be used to track everything from traffic patterns to pets, but it's healthcare applications that are drawing a lot of attention, particularly as companies try to develop safe, secure RFID tags for medical devices. Device tracking could provide instant access to the device's location and history, as well as specific status information such as whether a device is sterile or not.
Historically, RFID tags would be damaged by autoclave and sterilization, measures critical to patient safety. But two companies that are making strides in developing RFID technology for the healthcare sector are Australia and San Diego-based Mems-ID and Pennsylvania-based AdvantaPure.
Mems-ID's chip is mechanical, not electronic. This allows the chip to undergo high-temperature processes such as autoclave and irradiation sterilization without incurring damage. Yesterday the company submitted a press release summarizing the company's achievement in 2006, among them completing a proof-of-concept chip and reader system, raising $1.04 million in private equity in a second seed round of funding and filing four patent applications to supplement their current "core" technology.
AdvantaPure recently introduced the GammaTag (patent pending), which allows gamma radiation sterilization as well as CIP sterilization on tubing, hoses, bags and other items.
Providing this detailed product knowledge has caused some concern. In November, AdvaMed stated that the organization believed the FDA should not require UDI (unique device identification; the umbrella under which bar coding, RFID, etc. fall) for most devices, citing that the practice is neither "economically practical nor technologically feasible." AdvaMed pinpointed label space, cost, special printing and code-reading equipment and the need to incorporate an infrastructure to hold the information as barriers to the effective integration of UDIs.
Issues of patient privacy and surveillance are also relevant to the debate, and they shouldn't be dismissed. An article in Monday's Boston Globe described patient uneasiness with hospitals' increasing reliance on technology.
RFID technology represents progress toward a more efficient, streamlined record-keeping system, and current technology is striving to meet physician and patients needs. At the same time, daunting concerns of safety, cost and implementation challenges and patient comfort make a standard, universal tracking system seem a long way off. Companies like Mems-ID help the technology make a step forward, but perhaps prematurely.
