Key Takeaways
- Bluesight and Pfizer are moving RFID tagging upstream to the point of manufacture, reducing manual pharmacy work and simplifying hospital adoption.
- The partnership is designed to improve inventory accuracy, patient safety, compliance, and medication visibility through standardized, source-tagged SmartDose products.
Bluesight is partnering with Pfizer Global Hospital & Biosimilars to integrate SmartDose RFID-enabled medications with the KitCheck inventory management platform.
An estimated one-third of U.S. hospitals now use RFID technology to improve inventory management efficiency, strengthen patient safety and regulatory compliance, and reduce medication waste associated with expirations. Hospitals using KitCheck can procure SmartDose medications already tagged, encoded, and pre-associated at the point of manufacture.
Through the partnership, Bluesight’s engineers worked alongside Pfizer to ensure SmartDose was developed using industry best practices for RFID quality, interoperability, and downstream pharmacy workflows— including GS1 global data standards, ARC Spec S performance benchmarks, and specifications to assure tags of high integrity, accuracy, and performance.
How Does Source Tagging Simplify RFID Adoption for Hospitals?
Unlike hospital-based tagging programs, SmartDose applies RFID labels during manufacturing using proven GS1 encoding strategies and rigorous quality assurance processes.
“For more than a decade, we’ve believed RFID works best when every part of the supply chain plays a role,” said Kevin MacDonald, CEO and co-founder of Bluesight, in a statement. “Pfizer shares that vision, and this collaboration demonstrates what’s possible when manufacturing and hospital workflow expertise come together. By moving RFID upstream, we’re making adoption simpler while helping pharmacies spend more time focused on patient care.”
What Makes SmartDose RFID Labels More Reliable for Pharmacy Workflows?
Each vial undergoes individual, automated readback verification before release to confirm the tag is readable and correctly encoded, a first for source-tagged medications. These consistent manufacturing controls deliver a more reliable and accurate product, while reducing the complexity of hospital-managed tagging programs.
By moving tagging upstream to the point of manufacture, Pfizer is helping advance a standardized, interoperable approach that makes RFID easy for hospitals to adopt while preserving its efficiency, safety, and visibility benefits.
“At Pfizer, we looked at the workflow hospitals were performing and asked a simple question: Why should pharmacists and pharmacy technicians be doing work that can be completed at the point of manufacture?” said Erin Pezant, Global Business Excellence Lead at Pfizer Global Hospital & Biosimilars. “SmartDose was designed to remove unnecessary manual steps from the pharmacy by delivering medications that arrive already tagged and associated. Hospitals receive the benefits of RFID while reducing their own tagging operations.”
Pfizer SmartDose medications are projected to be available for purchase in the second half of 2026.