UHF RFID tags help pharmaceutical companies achieve pharmaceutical inventory management

A few days ago, Fagron Sterile Services (abbreviation: FSS) stated that starting from February 2022, it is preparing to apply RFID technology to some disposable medicines for customers in the medical industry. Hospitals using RFID systems can automatically capture data on these products and track inventory, expiration dates and recalls.

About FSS

FSS is a 503B outsourcing facility registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), mainly providing sterile drugs, including ready-to-use IV bags and syringes for ophthalmology, dialysis and urology and other treatments for pain relief. It entered the US compounding drug market in 2010, selling products directly to hospitals or doctors.

Typically, compounding pharmacies combine, remix, or vary the active ingredients and additives of standard medications based on a patient's specific needs. However, facilities designated as 503B (clause for outsourced site-blended formulations) operate on a much larger scale and follow standards to validate each process against current good manufacturing practice.

Recently, some of the company's customers requested that passive UHF RFID tags be embedded in product labels so that they could be automatically read by RFID scanning stations when medicines were received by hospitals.

At FSS's manufacturing base in Wichita, Kansas, the company is better able to provide customers with more automated drug inventory management solutions by embedding UHF RFID tags in its selected product tags.

Glen Olsheim, vice president of business and new product development at FSS, said the benefits for people who track products through RFID will be in managing inventory, identifying expiration dates and improving inventories for customers in the medical industry. Can have higher accuracy. At the same time, RFID tags have been applied to the products received by the hospital, which also saves manual operations and reduces errors.

To date, this growth in healthcare organizations has outpaced application by pharmaceutical companies. Some hospitals are hand-applying RFID tags because it is hard to find compounders who incorporate RFID tags into their products. This is a time-consuming process that can slow down the work of medical professionals and reduce efficiency.

"The goal is clear," Olson said. "We really believe in RFID technology. Our goal is to make our customers work more efficiently, and RFID has a very important role in improving their efficiency. Without this technology, maybe There are all kinds of mistakes, such as choosing the wrong drug, or mislabeling it, incorrectly using expired drugs leading to unnecessary waste or even health risks. These challenges pervade the industry.” Identifying and differentiating things like going to Products like oxyepinephrine, epinephrine, and ephedrine are subject to human error, although the drug names are familiar to the fast-moving medical industry user or pharmacist.

In addition to identifying medicines, the company wants to ensure its customers have access to inventory data to help identify items that need to be restocked or that need to be used before their expiration date. With the deployment of new technology, FSS will associate the unique ID number encoded on each RFID label with data such as expiration date, national drug code and serial number to achieve unified management.

When the syringes are filled on the assembly line, those for the RFID tag will be conveyed to a dedicated conveyor belt. FSS installs an RFID reading tunnel with a built-in UHF reader at the end of each assembly line or conveyor belt, which can be easily moved according to production needs. Labeled products are packaged in boxes or bags, and the reader then interrogates each drug's label while scanning the barcode on its packaging, thereby associating a specific package with a specific product.

This information can be compared with data indicating what products should be contained in each package. The software then identifies if there was a product packaging error—for example, if a syringe is missing. When a hospital receives a product, they can read the label via a scanning station and automatically access the relevant data, or use the label to confirm when the drug is delivered to the operating room or other area, ensuring that the drug is not delivered to the wrong patient Or use after expiration.