Blogs
March 6, 2025 / March 11, 2025 by Intelliguard
Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is becoming more present in our day-to-day activities. From department stores and online retailers to your neighborhood hospitals and pharmacies, this technology is used to identify precise locations of individual items.
Passive RFID technology helps organizations worldwide by quickly tracking and identifying assets via unique tags or labels. These tags have a small antenna that sends out electromagnetic fields to transmit data to the RFID reader. The RFID reader de-codes this data within seconds, which can save companies and their employees significant time (and dollars) each day.
Essentially, utilizing RFID tracking reduces the risk of human error, which can often happen when employees are manually scanning barcodes or counting individual items for hours at a time. RFID tagging helps to drive operational accuracy and efficiency, while providing item-level traceability, which is especially important in the healthcare supply chain.
Active RFID technology uses Real-Time Locating Systems, or RTLS, to monitor equipment – as the name suggests – in real time. Active RFID is often reserved for tracking expensive items that need to travel long distances, such as cargo containers. Assets that are tracked using active RFID will have a large power source, like a battery pack, which is meant to last anywhere from three to five years.RTLS tags are currently used in our healthcare system to keep track of equipment that is constantly moving, such as wheelchairs or patient transport beds. RTLS tags are considered active RFID, which means hospital staff or other healthcare personnel can receive real-time alerts about items with RTLS tags throughout the facility.
The distinct difference between passive and active RFID is that passive RFID technology does not have a large battery source. Instead, passive RFID tags (which only cost a few cents each) rely on a reader and an antenna to collect and transfer location information.A great example of passive RFID in healthcare is utilizing RFID-enabled smart tags for medication management. Intelliguard utilizes RFID tagging to promote patient safety across all levels of care by attaching small tags to medication and important medical supplies. Once a vial, syringe, pill pack, or other form of medication is tagged and encoded, it allows healthcare providers to know where that medication is across all units and individual facilities, which is critical in the event of recalled drugs.
Think about when you hear “code blue” over the hospital loudspeaker. When a patient is coding, it means they are having a medical emergency. When a code blue occurs, a rapid response team will come to the location to assist the patient. This team will bring something called a “crash cart,” which is stocked with critical life-saving supplies and medications to help stabilize the patient. Critical medications include lidocaine (for cardiac arrest), naloxone, amiodarone, and others. If any of these medications are incorrectly accounted for, missing, or expired, it can be detrimental – or even fatal – for that patient.Should a patient fall victim to a medication error or oversight, the unique identifier within the RFID tag (remember, this is passive RFID) can determine who was involved, and which medications were involved, at every level of care.Aside from being used to track medications throughout hospital supply chains, passive RFID tags are also used in other types of healthcare settings, such as nursing homes or memory care facilities. Small tags can be embedded in resident ID bracelets for safety and security purposes. Having the ability to see where residents are throughout large facilities is critical for the safety of those who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Have you ever thought about how many thousands of drugs pass through a hospital pharmacy each day? Without using RFID technology, pharmacy technicians spend anywhere from 15-20 minutes restocking one tray and surgery/anesthesia kit. Depending on the size of the hospital, pharmacies might be restocking as many as 30 trays per day.Pharmacies that utilize RFID can cut that stocking and restocking time down to about three minutes. Unique RFID tags to identify medications, coupled with an enclosure or smart cabinet to determine quantities and accuracy, pharmacy technicians and pharmacists can practice at the top of their license and worry less about manually counting drugs for each kit and tray across every floor and unit within a hospital.RFID-powered insights and data preventatively notify staff about inventory that is set to expire within 30 or 60 days. Additionally, if a certain medication is recalled, pharmacists can quickly identify all areas where that drug is located and quickly remove it from the floors and operating rooms to reduce patient risk.According to an Intelliguard study in 2014, when using manual replenishment processes, one in five trays (20 percent) leave a pharmacy with errors. However, when using an RFID-enabled process, 100 percent of the trays were accurate, meaning they had zero missing or expired medications.
Whether it’s being done by pharmacy technicians or the drug manufacturer, RFID tags are making a big splash in medication management. Here’s how it works: a unique RFID smart tag is placed on each medication, which can include vials, syringes, blister packs, and more. The tag is a small, clear label that does not block any of the drug manufacturer’s information.Once all tags are in place, pharmacy staff have a drug formulary database where they can immediately identify each individual medication’s National Drug Code (NDC) number, dose, manufacturer, package type, lot number, and expiration date.Pharmacists and pharmacy providers can then seamlessly track dispense and return transactions while ensuring regulatory DSCSA compliance is consistently met. This is done quickly and efficiency with RFID-enabled smart cabinets. The goal of RFID technology is to improve efficiency and accuracy across all hospital pharmacy workflows related to medication inventory, including storage, purchasing, and distribution.
Having RFID technology in place can make for a more seamless surgery experience for staff and patients. RFID is used in operating rooms (ORs) by anesthesiologists. On average, an anesthesiologist will administer anywhere from six to eight medications per patient, per case. These medications include local and general anesthetics, pain relievers, sedatives, paralytics (muscle relaxants) and inhalational gases.With an RFID-powered anesthesia station, the system automatically tracks which medications were used — with greater than 99 percent accuracy — ensuring that those critical medications are available and safe prior, during, and post-operation. Intelliguard’s Mira Care anesthesia station can scan all drugs located in the RFID-enabled drawers, including narcotics or other controlled substances, in about eight seconds.By utilizing RFID-enabled anesthesia stations, clinicians can eliminate the three most common medical errors (which account for about 60 percent of errors) that occur in the OR:
RFID also keeps track of medication wasting during operations, which helps hospitals identify trends and reduce opportunities for drug diversion, which costs an average $72 billion annually in the United States.With RFID-powered anesthesia stations in operating rooms, anesthesiologists spend less time clicking and counting, allowing them to focus on monitoring and caring for the patient.
RFID is the future of medication and healthcare supply chain management. This innovative technology, combined with on-demand insights and reporting, has been proven to reduce pharmacy staff fatigue, medication errors, and drug diversion. RFID allows healthcare providers to focus less on manual, time-consuming processes and focus more on providing quality care to each and every patient.