RFID technology is tracking and monitoring medicine and equipment

In recent years, medicine safety problems have occurred frequently. In 2006, several medicine suspension incidents occurred in my country: the Ministry of Health urgently suspended Xinfu, the State Food and medicine Administration (SFDA) suspended Houttuynia cordata injection, etc., because of problems , Counterfeit and substandard medicines have caused harm to people's life safety. According to the World Health Organization, the proportion of counterfeit medicines worldwide has exceeded 10%, and global annual sales of counterfeit medicines have exceeded US$32 billion, of which 60% are in developing countries. One-third of the world's annual deaths are caused by irrational medicine use. Approximately 7,000 Hospital patients die every year in the United States due to incorrect medication use. Data provided by the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association show that in my country, at least 200,000 people die every year due to wrong or improper use of medicines. The number of people taking unqualified medicines accounts for 11% to 26% of the number of people taking medicines. 10% of daily emergency cases are due to medication errors. cause.

Therefore, RFID technology plays an important role in tracking and monitoring medicines and equipment and rectifying and regulating the medical supplies market. According to the "Global Healthcare and Medical Application Market" report, RFID revenue in the healthcare and medical application market will grow to US$2.3188 billion in 2011, with a compound annual growth rate of 29.9%. Among them, the compound annual growth rate of the medicine tracking market will be close to 32.8%, and the compound annual growth rate of the medical equipment tracking market will reach 28.9%.

At present, my country's medicine circulation supervision mainly uses electronic supervision codes. The State Food and medicine Administration requires manufacturers and distributors of key medicines to complete the registration process before October 31, 2008. If they do not use the unified identification of electronic medicine supervision codes, they will not be allowed to sell. The electronic supervision code identification consists of 20 digits, one-dimensional barcode and prompt information. The electronic supervision code is an identification given to each item by the Chinese government for electronic supervision of products. It is the ID Card of the item. However, the electronic supervision code has inherent technical flaws:

(1) Low safety performance. The electronic supervision code is a one-dimensional barcode with low technical complexity, low difficulty in counterfeiting, and low security performance.

(2) Information cannot be changed. The information of the electronic supervision code can only be read by printing, but cannot be written. The data information contained in it is fixed and cannot be changed.

(3) Information reading speed is slow.

(4) It belongs to visual communication and has poor anti-interference ability.

RFID has great application potential in medicine anti-counterfeiting and tracking and supply chain management. RFID technology is used to track each medicine in all aspects of sales and record it in the database in real time, which greatly ensures the safety of medicines in the circulation process. RFID medicine management aims to use high and new technologies to achieve safety supervision of special medicines and chemical reagents, prevent counterfeit medicines, expired medicines, and illegal medicines from entering the market, encourage "doctors and patients" to use medicines correctly, and curb bad practices that drive up medicine prices and monopolize the medicine market. phenomenon occurs, improve the monitoring of medicine transportation and storage environmental conditions; medicine manufacturers can also dynamically monitor the flow and sales of medicines through this system in order to adjust the production and inventory of medicines and improve their operational efficiency.

As manufacturers of medicines, pharmaceutical companies are responsible for affixing the RFID electronic tags of the medicines on the packaging. There are two types of pharmaceutical RFID electronic labels, one is the electronic label affixed to the small pharmaceutical packaging box of each sales unit, and the other is the UHF label affixed to the packaging carton.

medicine wholesale companies, medicine retail companies, medical institutions, etc. need to be equipped with special RFID reading and writing equipment. Pharmaceutical operating enterprises carry out product authenticity identification and circulation information writing operations during the product entry and exit stages.

The medicine regulatory department can use handheld computers to conduct on-site inspection and identification of medicines in storage and on sale in medicine circulation-related units. Manage the identity registration and digital certificate issuance of medicine manufacturers, medicine circulation companies, medicine retail companies, and medical institutions. The RFID Readers used by various enterprises and institutions are also authenticated and managed through appropriate mechanisms. When consumers purchase medicines in hospitals or pharmacies, they use the ultra-high frequency RFID reading and writing equipment or Library-self-service-borrowing-and-returning-machine-source-manufacturer-UHF-touch-screen-borrowing-and-returning-machine.html target='_blank'>self-service identification terminals in the hospitals or pharmacies to identify the authenticity of the medicines.

Application solutions of RFID technology in medical medicine management:

1. Establish a medicine management platform using RFID technology and network technology;

2. Establish an overall plan for medicine management;

3. Network data reading and writing equipment composed of RFID technology and network microcontroller;

4. Writing system software;

5. Frequency settings used by radio frequency identification cards used in different special medicines.

RFID electronic tags are embedded in medicine packaging. When the medicines leave the factory, they are registered in the medicine management database through RFID technology. UHF RFID reading and writing equipment is provided in hospitals or pharmacies for doctors and patients to check the authenticity of the medicines, the date of manufacture, or read the usage instructions of the medicines. and precautions. When a medicine is sold and used, the packaging will be unsealed and marked, and the ID number of the medicine will be canceled. medicine manufacturers can use this system to understand the flow and sales of medicines in order to adjust production plans. It is especially important for the management of special medicines or illegal medicines.

The working process of RFID technology in medical medicine management:

1. The reader/writer sends out radio frequency signals of a certain frequency through the antenna;

2. When the RFID tag enters the magnetic field, it generates an induced current to obtain energy, and sends its own code and other information to the reader;

3. The reader collects information and decodes it;

4. The RFID reader/writer sends the information data to the computer host for processing.

RFID has the following specific applications in the medical field:

UHF RFID medical consumable cabinet

The consumables cabinet uses RFID technology to number each type or even each medicine. It combines the UHF reader and the antenna in the cabinet to obtain the location of the item and realize automatic identification of the items in the RFID medical consumables cabinet. Processes such as access, inventory and monitoring. Automatically scan and identify consumable information, track the entire supply process of medicines, and monitor from application, purchase, acceptance, receipt, use, etc., covering the entire use process of medicines, providing accurate information for hospitals to effectively plan statistics and replenishment. data support.

Pharmaceutical warehousing inbound and outbound management

When medicines are put in and out of the warehouse, UHF RFID technology can be used to collect data and check quantities in batches, replacing the previous document work. The work data information is uploaded and shared with the system in real time in a wireless environment, improving work efficiency while improving work efficiency. The accuracy improves the information level of the logistics center.

Medical waste information management

By realizing the cooperation of different hospitals and transportation companies, a traceable medical waste tracking system is established with the help of RFID technology, which can track the entire process of medical waste transportation to the treatment plant and avoid illegal treatment of medical waste. At present, Japan has launched research in this area and achieved good results.

Blood information management

Applying RFID technology to blood management can effectively avoid the disadvantages of small barcode capacity, achieve non-contact identification, reduce blood contamination, achieve multi-target identification, and improve data collection efficiency. Last year, it was reported that a certain research institute in the United States was testing an UHF RFID solution that uses UHF readers and RFID tags to track all samples and complete inventory. The institute focuses on testing hardware components, including numerous UHF RFID electronic tags and UHF handheld terminals. In the meantime, the team is exploring whether they can scan the freezers without opening them.

Medical device and medicine traceability

Accurately record the identity of items and patients through RFID technology, including basic information about product use, specific product information involved in adverse events, areas where products with the same quality problem may occur, patients involved in the problem product, and the location of the problem product that has not yet been used, etc. information, trace back to defective products and related patients, control all unused medical devices and medicines, and provide strong support for incident handling.