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September 15, 2025 / September 16, 2025 by Gina Breckenridge | Leave a comment
As the healthcare industry is in the midst of a major transformation. Now, more than ever, clinicians are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in a variety of forms to streamline workflows and enhance patient safety. We can’t talk about healthcare technology and innovation without highlighting radio frequency identification, or RFID.
Since 2009, Jay Williams, Vice President of Business Development at Intelliguard, has championed RFID as a solution for hospital pharmacies that were spending hours manually tracking down medications and struggling with optimizing inventory. Jay and his team worked to educate pharmacists and drug manufacturers on the importance of adopting this technology, as it creates a safer environment for both providers and patients by providing item-level visibility in medication tracking and management.
Jay’s passion for healthcare innovation made a significant impact on how hospitals and health systems operate today. From forging industry-first partnerships with Fresenius Kabi and eAgile to spending hours with clinicians to develop long-term solutions for their daily frustrations, Jay played a critical role in driving excitement, advocacy, and early adoption of passive RFID technology in hospital pharmacies and operating rooms.
In 2006, Intelliguard completed the very first RFID medication management pilot study at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, after the hospital experienced a multi-million-dollar drug diversion event. As a result of this pilot, Intelliguard developed controlled temperature storage with a security reader, RFID antennas, an RFID reader, and the necessary software to prevent future instances of drug diversion. All high-value medications had RFID inlays attached by their drug distributor, AmerisourceBergen. This was the first time that medications were RFID-tagged at the source by the drug distributor, which took stress off of hospital pharmacy teams.
Jay came on board with Intelliguard in 2009. Through collaborative efforts, he worked with a small team to commercialize hardware and software solutions that included a pharmacy reader, a dispensing cabinet, and a patient bedside reader. “When we started the company, there were no other passive RFID solutions for managing medications,” Jay said. “We developed relationships with healthcare clinicians and even competitors. We had to listen to providers describe their issues and problems in real time. From there, we experimented. Sometimes, we failed. But ultimately, we grew. Through much trial and error, we worked to develop hardware solutions and software solutions to streamline clinical workflows.”At the time, no standard RFID tags were being used for vials, ampules, IV bags, or syringes. Jay’s team researched different solutions and focused on how these RFID tags could be accurately read when used on a vial of liquid medication. Jay shared that there were issues around flag tag design, solving how to make them work with adhesive, and putting a band around the smart flag tags so that they could be read correctly. “Everyone assumes these solutions already existed, but they didn’t. We had to be innovative. We had to create them. And that was possible with key technology partners like CCL eAgile,” Jay said. From here, Intelliguard’s team spent months educating healthcare professionals on what RFID technology was, how it worked, and how it would integrate into their daily hospital operations without adding to their existing workflows.
Adopting new technology in healthcare requires showcasing its value, as well as demonstrating proof of concept, to healthcare leadership and the clinicians who will use it in their daily operations. For example, hospitals will want to see independent case studies as well as tangible examples of return on investment (ROI), such as seeing a 100% reduction in human error while using RFID to replenish medication kits and trays in a hospital pharmacy. (2015 Case Study)
Jay’s team at Intelliguard spent years demonstrating how RFID could integrate seamlessly into clinical workflows, emphasizing to hospitals that it can improve safety, reduce waste, and streamline clinical workflows. These proactive efforts paved the way for broader adoption of RFID in hospitals throughout Europe and North America. Today, around 1,000 hospitals utilize RFID within their pharmacies. Adoption is only increasing as drug regulations evolve and clinical teams share their success stories. “Technology should improve workflow efficiency, which leads to a reduction of costs, increased quality, and improved care. Allowing clinicians to have accurate data is a given. It’s the ante to be a technology player in any market,” Jay said. “But how well the data is transitioned into easy-to-deploy activities that lead to critical results is the differentiator.”
Jay served as a critical driver for the first tagged-at-the-source medication in the early 2000s.
His team, comprised of future-thinking leaders in their field, developed a partnership with Fresenius Kabi, a well-established drug manufacturer and distributor. Jay Williams was introduced to Gwen Volpe with Fresenius Kabi. Gwen led a team that was interested in solving a customer problem that their internal research had uncovered, which was time spent manually tagging medications in the pharmacy. Jay shared how he was a part of this success story. “At a meeting at Fresenius Kabi’s headquarters in Lake Zurich, Illinois, they announced their intent to build an RFID product line that began with a 100mL vial of Diprivan under the brand “Plus RFID”. I remember walking out of that meeting with several others from Intelliguard believing that we had changed the world.”
Jay shared that passive RFID solutions will become the gold standard for medication management in hospitals within the next five years. The value continues to be proven to clinical teams and healthcare leadership through significant time savings as well as cost savings, both of which lead to more streamlined operations and increased patient safety.“Accurately and efficiently managing high-value, critical-dose medications, processes, and workflows will be a major focus in the future of our healthcare system.”
Ultimately, the goal of RFID-powered medication management systems is to bring visibility and efficiency to hospital medication management. This is achieved by unprecedented medication data accuracy (greater than 99.9%) across pharmacies, operating rooms, and supply chain management. Health systems that adopt intelligent medication management solutions will have a competitive edge in operational excellence as well as patient-centered care.
As Jay’s nearly 16-year tenure with Intelliguard comes to a close, he wanted to pass along career advice and general thoughts. “Over the years, our RFID hardware and software solutions, our distribution partners, our pharmaceutical partners, our technology partners…it’s truly unbelievable. I hope you all experience that same “I’m making a difference” feeling during your careers. You have that opportunity at Intelliguard. My advice is to be curious and be a problem-solver, not just a problem identifier. I hope that each job in your career path leads to a nexus where everything you’ve learned can be fully engaged at the end of your career. That moment where you can say, “I am meant to be here.” That’s the way I have felt about Intelliguard for the past 15 years.”Jay emphasized that at the end of every idea and solution, there are patients. Patients are counting on companies like Intelliguard to offer solutions. “We are not making little plastic widgets being dispensed out of a gumball machine. We are creating products that impact people’s safety and lives.”During retirement, Jay said he’s mostly looking forward to spending time outside mountain biking, hiking, and traveling cross-country in an RV. He shared that he will be participating in several science-related projects, one of which involves deploying trail cameras to count wildlife in a 30,000-acre preserve. Jay will also be spending quality time with his wife, children, and grandson.We sincerely appreciate Jay’s years of dedicated service, his passion for RFID technology, and his commitment to demonstrating its impact on patient safety.