Printed Electronics Now staff11.06.20
TAGEOS announced that it joined DoseID, the first member-driven industry consortium for the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in the healthcare space.
DoseID consists of industry innovators who are committed to increasing the interoperability, quality and performance of RFID-tagged products as they move through the pharmaceutical supply chain from manufacturer to patient.
The DoseID RFID tag certification will be provided by Auburn University RFID Lab’s ARC Program.
This ensures that parties not only meet the standards set by the consortium, but that the established standards meet the needs of industry players including pharmaceutical manufacturers, 503b compounding pharmacies, pharmacy automation vendors, and inlay and tag manufacturers.
Members of DoseID, which launched in August 2020, hail from other companies across the spectrum including Omnicell Inc., George Schmitt & Co., Sandoz, Baxter, Hikma, Leiters, Nephron Pharmaceuticals, Kit Check, MPI Label System and CCL Healthcare.
“We highly value and recognize DoseID’s mission and the work of its members to establish the first member-driven industry consortium for the use of RFID technology in the healthcare segment,” said Matthieu Picon, CEO at TAGEOS. “DoseID represents a critical and important opportunity to move to next-generation systems and universal standards in the medical tracking space. We look forward to working with industry partners in DoseID to achieve these goals.”
DoseID takes serialization beyond DSCSA, from the unit of sale to the unit of use.
It uniquely serializes every dose, container, or device to track each action taken upon it during its entire lifecycle and ensures RFID tagged drugs work in all downstream IT systems in hospitals and health systems.
The organizations that make up DoseID collectively account for the majority of the existing RFID tagging market, positioning the consortium well to combat the challenges associated with unit-level drug visibility.
Some of the concepts of DoseID have already been shown to be successful, with more than 120 million tagged units in the field to date and a recent pilot with the FDA associated with DSCSA compliance.
It is only with participation across the entire pharmaceutical supply chain that RFID unit-level medication tracking can achieve the DoseID goals of interoperability, reliable tag performance and complete and accurate data.
RFID technology can provide significant benefits to the healthcare industry in terms of ensuring patient safety and improving supply chain efficiency.
Coupling RFID technology with the EPC for example will provide the capability to locate and track items throughout the supply chain, allowing significant more data to be attached to items and case level.
Using RFID will also allow healthcare companies to capture required information as part of new regulatory requirements, and at the same time it can help detect products that are counterfeit or fake, tampered with, adulterated or substituted and/or unacceptable e.g. expired, discarded, returned or recalled.
