Mar 05, 2007The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will reveal the methods and results of tests it has performed to determine the effects of RFID interrogators on implanted cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators during the fifth RFID Academic Convocation, to be held April 30 in Orlando, Fla., in conjunction with RFID Journal LIVE! 2007.
Seth Seidman, an electrical engineer in the FDA's Division of Physics, Office of Science and Engineering Labs, Center for Devices of Radiological Health, will present a paper entitled "Electromagnetic Compatibility of Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators Exposed to RFID Readers." Seidman coauthored the paper with Paul Ruggera, Randall Brockman, Brian Lewis and Mitchell Shein.
"This session will be of interest for anyone in the medical device community who is interested in test methodologies for evaluating the impact of HF and UHF RFID systems," says Stephen Miles, cochair of the RFID Academic Convocation and a research engineer at the MIT Auto-ID Lab. "The results are being presented for the first time, and will be of great interest to those looking to leverage the benefits RFID offers in the health care and life sciences fields."
The convocation's HLS track will also feature a presentation on RFID in the health-care supply chain by Carolyn Walton, vice president of information systems at Wal-Mart. Ron Bone, senior vice president of distribution planning at McKesson, and Mike Rose, senior vice president of strategy at Johnson & Johnson, will address standards progress and research issues during the health care and life sciences track. Both Bone and Rose are members of the EPCglobal Healthcare Life Sciences Business Action Group.
"We invite everyone from the health care field to provide input as to how we can best serve HLS industry stakeholders," Miles says, "who are working to meet objectives set forth in FDA guidelines and e-pedigree laws in California and other states."
The requirements were first articulated in the FDA Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA). That law was enacted to ensure that drug products purchased by consumers are safe and effective, and to avoid the unacceptable risk to American consumers from counterfeit, adulterated, misbranded, subpotent or expired drugs (see FDA Issues New 'Counterfeit Drug Task Force' Report).
The RFID Academic Convocations, hosted by the Auto-ID Labs at MIT, are led by a conference committee consisting of RFID research directors responsible for the academic integrity of the RFID Academic Convocation proceedings, separate from RFID Journal LIVE! This is a unique opportunity to keep abreast of the research happening around the world, and to participate in the process of road-mapping future research projects.
