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Covidien to Pilot Its RFID-enabled System This Summer
A hospital typically tracks the administration of contrast media through handwritten reports detailing how much of a particular product was administered, then adding those reports to a specific patient's file. With Covidien's new RFID-enabled system, a technologist would attach a syringe, prefilled with contrast media, to the power injector. The injector's built-in RFID interrogator would capture the data encoded to the syringe's tag, which complies with the ISO 15693 standard and would be encoded with a unique ID number, as well as the contrast media's lot number, expiration and manufacture dates, product name and fill volume, concentration and National Drug Code (NDC) number.
If the interrogator reads the tag and determines that the syringe has never been utilized before—and that its expiration date has not yet passed—the injector would become operable and the reader would encode the tag to indicate that syringe has been used. After administering the contrast agent to the patient, the technician would use the system's label printer to print the volume and concentration of the contrast media that had been in the syringe, and to attach that label to the patient's file.
If the syringe has been used or has reached its expiration date, the interrogator would read that data on the tag. The system would then issue an alert indicating the syringe's expired or used status, and would not enable the injection of the syringe's contents into a patient. If a syringe contains the wrong substance, it would not have the proper RFID tag on it. Consequently, the injector would not operate and the system would issue an alert to the technician.
In the future, Straeb says, Covidien intends to expand the system to include other types of data, such as the various phases of the injection (for instance, some injections are administered more rapidly at first, then slowed down). This information would be transmitted to the health-care facility's back-end system and printed as well, so that if the patient were to require the procedure again, there would be records regarding how the previous contrast media injection was administered. "This is the first step—to have the injector communicate with the syringe," he states.
Those using Covidien's current power injector can purchase an upgrade with an RFID reader and a standard thermal label printer. Contrast media will be sold either as RFID-enabled, or not. "This is a system that helps to reduce the risk of potentially life-threatening errors," Straeb says. He does not indicate what the cost of the system would be, nor the price of upgrades or syringes.
Thus far, Straeb says, there are no customers piloting the project, though Covidien plans to begin testing it this summer, then make it commercially available by the end of the summer. He expects any facility that offers CT scans could be a potential customer.
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If the interrogator reads the tag and determines that the syringe has never been utilized before—and that its expiration date has not yet passed—the injector would become operable and the reader would encode the tag to indicate that syringe has been used. After administering the contrast agent to the patient, the technician would use the system's label printer to print the volume and concentration of the contrast media that had been in the syringe, and to attach that label to the patient's file.
If the syringe has been used or has reached its expiration date, the interrogator would read that data on the tag. The system would then issue an alert indicating the syringe's expired or used status, and would not enable the injection of the syringe's contents into a patient. If a syringe contains the wrong substance, it would not have the proper RFID tag on it. Consequently, the injector would not operate and the system would issue an alert to the technician.
In the future, Straeb says, Covidien intends to expand the system to include other types of data, such as the various phases of the injection (for instance, some injections are administered more rapidly at first, then slowed down). This information would be transmitted to the health-care facility's back-end system and printed as well, so that if the patient were to require the procedure again, there would be records regarding how the previous contrast media injection was administered. "This is the first step—to have the injector communicate with the syringe," he states.
Thus far, Straeb says, there are no customers piloting the project, though Covidien plans to begin testing it this summer, then make it commercially available by the end of the summer. He expects any facility that offers CT scans could be a potential customer.
