Nov 19, 2004This article was originally published by RFID Update.
November 19, 2004—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the marketing of another RFID-based technology for use in healthcare: the SurgiChip, whose goal is to "prevent wrong-site, wrong-procedure and wrong-patient surgery." An RFID chip, encoded with surgery information such as patient identification, date, procedure, and assigned surgeon, is stored until the day of surgery, when it is affixed to the patient's body with adhesive and only removed once the surgery begins. At numerous points in the process, the chip-encoded information is scanned and verified by the patient, an error-checking technique that balances technological automation with the patient's own expectation of treatment. Illinois-based label and printer maker Zebra Technologies is providing the RFID hardware for the system.
Despite numerous high-profile stories of this FDA approval, the product appears to be in only the earliest stages of marketing; the surgichip.com website includes a mere three pages of product and company information.
Read the article at FDA.gov
