- The software company’s Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing solution will bring RFID based tracking of goods in hospitals
- A team of RFID companies are embarking on the new solution deployment: Zebra, Terso and Avery Dennison
RFID technology deployment has enjoyed traction in the retail industry—with tags tracking apparel and other goods through the supply chain‚—but healthcare may be poised as the next large industry to gain from such technology.
Oracle recently released its RFID for Replenishment solution as part of its Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) platform to help healthcare customers optimize inventory management.
Oracle’s global, cloud-service offering will leverage UHF RFID tags from Avery Dennison, and RFID-powered read points including cabinets, refrigerators and coolers from Terso Solutions, as well as handheld and fixed readers from Zebra Technologies. With the team-approach, the companies can begin building a system that could allow hospitals to automatically capture usage of healthcare products, update stock balances, track location of goods and trigger restocking of supplies and materials.
Leveraging Teamwork to Build Automated Inventory
Once deployed, healthcare organizations can employ these features to increase productivity, expand their inventory insights, and prevent delays by helping ensure the right amount of stock is in the right location at the right time, said Derek Gittoes, Oracle’s VP SCM of product strategy.
Oracle already offers a mobile application that healthcare inventory specialists can use to view, and input data about inventory levels. That can mean scanning a bar code on a product’s bin to trigger a replenishment activity. The company’s software is in use by some hospitals already as well, for managing contracts with suppliers.
“What’s new is the prebuilt integrations with [RFID] so that we can automate a lot of the inventory usage and inventory tracking activities without having to send out people to do all that work manually,” Gittoes said.
Adding Automation to Existing Supply Chain Solutions
In fact, between the hospital-supplies vendors, the distributors and hospitals, countless hours are spent in the effort of managing goods. Some of that time could be better spent on patient care, according to Gittoes.
“What I don’t think a lot of people fully appreciate is just how much the supply chain related activity of a healthcare provider actually contributes to the overall cost of healthcare,” said Gittoes. He pointed to a 2024 Gartner report has indicated 36 percent of healthcare costs are supply chain related. And the items in that supply chain can be everything from surgical gloves to implants.
Oracle has designed a solution with two focuses— Periodic Automatic Replenishment (PAR) level tracking of low value goods stored in bins, and individual tracking of more expensive products. Avery Dennison produces the UHF RFID inlays which go into the different tags.
PAR Level Tracking With RFID-Tagged Bins
In the case of PAR managed items, when a bin of goods such as latex gloves is emptied by a nurse or a technician, they place the RFID-tagged empty bin on a dedicated surface that has a built-in reader. The Terso reader—called an RFID Surface Read Point—can be deployed on a shelf or counter.
After the surface reader captures that tag, its ID is linked to the product assigned to that bin and the related data is managed by Terso’s software, which then integrates with the Fusion system. Oracle’s software then either sends an alert to the hospital’s supply chain team or triggers an automated replenishment. In the latter case, the system could create and send a new purchase order for the supplier.
The solution, with a relatively low-cost installation, could enable a hospital to eliminate most of the manual work around replenishment, while also eliminating any potential shortages or stock outs.
Tracking at the Item Level
The second option being offered through Fusion focuses on the higher valued items that need to be tracked independently.
For high value goods such as implants, an RFID tag could be placed on the packaging of the item either at the point of manufacture or when received at the hospital. The location and status of that item could then be detected wherever RFID readers are in use.
Hospitals may want to know when the item is onsite, when it goes to a department such as operating room, and when it was consumed. For this process, Terso’s RFID enabled enclosures, (cabinets, refrigerators and freezers), can be used, as well as Zebra handheld or fixed reader portals, all of which come with built in RFID readers.
Secured Cabinets
Terso’s cabinets include ambient storage or temperature-controlled refrigerators or freezers. Built-in RFID reader and antennas identify what is inside them, each time the door is opened and closed again.
These units are secured so that users need to present an ID card to identify themselves before the doors open, at which point they can take a product out.
Such devices from Terso are already in use at about 1,200 healthcare facilities in the U.S. to automatically capture usage, to update stock balances, track location, and trigger restocking of supplies and materials, said David Lefkowitz, Terso’s vice president of market development.
That helps organizations “eliminate manual product counts and automate restocks by using RFID-enabled tagging, cabinets, and PAR bins to automatically create supply replenishment requests in Oracle Inventory Management,” added Gittoes.
Easing Entry into Healthcare
The teamwork may help open up a new marketplace for RFID in the healthcare supply chain, said Zebra Technologies’ customer success director Randy Dunn, acting as a catalyst to bringing RFID based intelligence to the environment of healthcare supply chains, which he pointed out have thousands of unique items that often come with expiration dates and that are tightly regulated.
“We can offer you the whole thing, you can buy it all from Oracle and we’re the ones standing behind it,” he said, adding that Oracle has conversations underway with customers to start piloting the system.
To support management of the data and related analytics, Oracle is offering what it calls its inventory shortage workbench which acts as a control tower for monitoring the inventory usage and understanding what may be over or understocked for a specific location.
RFID Pilots Pending
The teamwork may help open up a new marketplace for RFID in the healthcare supply chain, said Zebra Technologies’ customer success director Randy Dunn, a catalyst to bringing RFID based intelligence to the environment of healthcare supply chains that have thousands of unique items that often come with expiration dates and that are tightly regulated.
“Leadership from a large IT player such as Oracle helps bring potential end-to-end solutions to this complex market,” Dunn said.
Dunn sees the strategy of RFID deployment in healthcare supply chains broken into phases. The first is working directly with the healthcare industry constituents to understand the challenges and build viable solutions. That means understanding healthcare-based constraints, understanding where any gaps might be in the existing technology solutions and how to fill those gaps.
The technology team is likely to work with key suppliers and their hospital partners and identify how a solution “can get delivered in a way to all the interested parties can reach all these supply chain efficiency objectives,” he said
Pilots on the Horizon
Dunn added that some goods are already being tagged with RFID labels. “Manufacturers, I think, are quite bullish on using RFID tags if the promise of more accurate and more precise inventory at multiple locations is real.”
Within a year or so, Dunn predicted there may be pilots in place and healthcare providers across supply, distribution and hospitals themselves may be talking about early results around inventory accuracy.
Lefkowitz sees several factors underway that are driving RFID deployment in healthcare today. One is the improved performance and lower cost of the technology itself. The other is increased pressures on healthcare that require a more automated system. Since COVID, many hospitals have been understaffed. That increasingly demanding culture for healthcare, he said, may mean “they’re ready for this type of technology, and [RFID] is on the rise and acceptance certainly seems to be as well.”
In the meantime, Oracle’s Fusion Supply Chain solutions are in use in multiple industries, Gittoes said “but the supply chain demands for healthcare providers are quite unique so we’ve been building out capabilities that are really specific to the healthcare market.”