RFID chips track gowns and drapes

Healthcare Purchasing News, March, 2004

SRI will install Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in more than 1 million of its reusable surgical gowns and drapes in this implementation. SRI believes that this is the first full integration of RFID Technology into Class 11 Medical Devices and among the largest uses to date of "Multi Read" applications of RFID technology. The technology is used for identifying and tracking a wide range of objects in diverse environments based on the use of a small tag (or "transponder") that stores a unique code, together with additional information that the user may specify. A "reader" is used both to transmit a signal to a tag and retrieve stored information from it; no contact or line of sight is required, and long operating ranges are possible. SRI incorporated "multi-read" RFID tags into its surgical gowns and drapes, replacing its use of labor-intensive bar code scanning to track product usage.

SRI/Surgical Express, Inc.

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