SML has released its latest inlay for the pharmaceutical industry, designed for tracking single-dose drugs produced in disposable vials. The new product, known as the GB32U9, is SML’s smallest inlay to date, according to the company, and is engineered to transmit data effectively when applied to vials filled with liquid and made from plastic or glass packaging. The passive UHF RFID inlay is available now, following approximately 18 months of engineering and testing.
SML is currently in the process of delivering the new inlays to at least one pharmaceutical company, but the RFID technology provider is also in discussions with other U.S.-based businesses. The company began building RFID tag products for the pharmaceutical industry for the past three years, says Dean Frew, SML Group’s chief technology officer and senior VP of RFID solutions. However, he adds, widespread interest in the technology’s use for drugs and other controlled substances at hospitals didn’t see dramatic growth until 2019 and 2020.
The recent surge in drug company interest resulted, in part, from the use of RFID technology by hospitals, which have begun to track pain medications and other products onsite, as well as when they are administered to a patient, via RFID readers. Since such facilities have increased their demand, Frew explains, this has led to drug companies investing in the tags and related solutions. “Just like with every other vertical,” he states, “companies [in the pharmaceutical industry] are seeing what can be done with item-level RFID, and that leads to growing demand,” both for the tags and for solutions that utilize the tag-read data to improve operations.
Another accelerator to that growth is the advent of a new standard for pharmaceutical RFID tags, created by the DoseID consortium. The group, organized in early 2020 (see Consortium Aims to Standardize RFID for Pharmaceuticals), comprises healthcare and technology companies, as well as label and packaging firms, dedicated to creating a standardized approach to RFID use on pharmaceutical products. DoseID includes a certification program created by the Auburn University RFID Lab as part of its ARC Program. The GB32U9, Frew reports, is among the three first inlays to gain Spec S certification from the program.
The use of RFID tags and labels for medications has tended to be centered around single-dose products, such as small vials containing liquids, since many drugs arrive at hospitals in that form. Kit Check has been building solutions for hospitals, for instance, which has helped to drive interest in the tagging of products. SML’s GB32U9, specifically designed for unit-of-use medications in pharmaceutical applications, leverages NXP‘s latest chip, the UCODE 9. According to Frew, the inlay provides high quality and rapid inventory counting in dense RFID tag populations.
The challenge, Frew says, was to design a tag that would not detune when attached to a liquid-filled product. Single-use syringes and vials come in multiple kinds of plastics and glass. For example, some glass vials contain a coating that prevents UV light from destroying the drugs stored within, which is conductive and thus challenging for RFID tag reading. Therefore, the company created an antenna that responds reliably in the presence of liquids, as well as a variety of other materials including plastics or glass. The antenna must also work despite its very small size.
The company has been working with iterations of the tag throughout the past 18 months, Frew says. “We worked with companies in the DoseID consortium,” he recalls, then designed the ultra-small size leveraging the sensitivity of the UCODE 9 chip to provide accurate tracking of pharmaceutical packages. In addition to items such as plastic or glass syringes or vials, he adds, the inlay can be deployed with other plastic materials containing liquids. The inlay’s small design means the GB32U9 fits on a wide range of pharmaceutical products.
The GB32U9 was designed with auto-adjust technology, unique brand identifiers and a pre-serialized 96-bit Electronic Product Code (EPC). Its antenna measures 20 millimeters by 10 millimeters (0.8 inch by 0.4 inch) with a wet paper face size of 26 millimeters by 12 millimeters (1 inch by 0.5 inch). Typically, the tags will be applied at the fill line by a pharmaceutical company, after which they can be read throughout the supply chain. “That’s where opportunity comes in, having supply chain solutions,” Frew says. Once tagged products reach the hospital, RFID readers (such as those from Kit Check) enable the facility to further leverage the collected tag-read data.
The small size and material challenges mean the read range is shorter than standard UHF RFID tags, Frew says, with a range of about 1 meter (3.3 feet), but that varies depending on the environment and the type of reader being used. However, he notes, the pharmaceutical industry typically does not require long read ranges for RFID transactions. While goods sold in stores need to be read as they move through dock doors or during inventory counts, the drug products are more often read in tunnels or dedicated cabinets.
For instance, once vials are filled, they typically are sent down a conveyor belt, where a tag could be interrogated via a tunnel reader as goods are filled, packed, shipped or received at a warehouse. In that application, the readers could capture tag ID numbers from a box or tray containing hundreds of tagged vials. With that data collected, information could be linked to the tag ID, such as each product’s fill date, lot number and expiration date, and then be updated each time the tag is read.
After drugs are received at hospitals, many facilities use RFID-reading cabinets, refrigerators or carts. The products are read as the trays are placed into cabinets, and the hospitals then know which substances they have onsite, as well as which will soon expire. The read data provides further benefits by enabling the tracking of each medication dose to a patient’s bedside.
With the DoseID specification, the tags are built to be read by any RFID reader that could be used by a healthcare or pharmaceutical company. This, according to Frew, ensures that the identity and details of each product can be monitored throughout a supply chain, no matter who has custody of the goods at any given time.