System for bulk encoding medical items
First Claim
1. A method for bulk encoding a plurality of medical items with respective individual wireless identification tags for identifying and tracking the medical items, each medical item of the plurality having a characteristic that is identical to all other medical items in the plurality and each of the plurality of medical items having a human-readable label located on an outside surface, the encoding method comprising:
- storing information about the plurality of medical items, including the identical characteristic in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory;
attaching a wireless identification tag to the outer surface of each of the plurality of medical items with a clear material held by adhesive, each of the attached wireless identification tags having a different serial number, whereby the human-readable label of the medical item is readable when the wireless identification tag is attached;
after the wireless identification tags have been attached to the plurality of medical items, placing all the plurality of tagged medical items into a reading enclosure and then, activating and reading the wireless identification tags while they are attached to their respective medical items to obtain the serial number of each of the wireless identification tags of the plurality of medical items in the same enclosure; and
associating the serial numbers read from the plurality of activated wireless identification tags in the enclosure to the characteristic in the database thereby uniquely identifying each of the plurality of medical items with their wireless identification tag serial number.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for bulk encoding medical items in a tracking system in a healthcare facility comprises attaching to each of a plurality of identical medical items a blank RFID tag. When activated simultaneously, the serial numbers of all RFID tags on all the identical medical items are read and their serial numbers are associated with the pre-stored characteristics of the medical item in a data base. The RFID tags are blank in that they include no human-readable data concerning the medical article to which the RFID tag is attached. A data mining system and method are provided for mining the database.
7 Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method for bulk encoding a plurality of medical items with respective individual wireless identification tags for identifying and tracking the medical items, each medical item of the plurality having a characteristic that is identical to all other medical items in the plurality and each of the plurality of medical items having a human-readable label located on an outside surface, the encoding method comprising:
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storing information about the plurality of medical items, including the identical characteristic in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory; attaching a wireless identification tag to the outer surface of each of the plurality of medical items with a clear material held by adhesive, each of the attached wireless identification tags having a different serial number, whereby the human-readable label of the medical item is readable when the wireless identification tag is attached; after the wireless identification tags have been attached to the plurality of medical items, placing all the plurality of tagged medical items into a reading enclosure and then, activating and reading the wireless identification tags while they are attached to their respective medical items to obtain the serial number of each of the wireless identification tags of the plurality of medical items in the same enclosure; and associating the serial numbers read from the plurality of activated wireless identification tags in the enclosure to the characteristic in the database thereby uniquely identifying each of the plurality of medical items with their wireless identification tag serial number. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method for bulk encoding a plurality of medical items with RFID tags for identifying and tracking the medical items, comprising:
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selecting a plurality of identical medical items, each of which has a name and a characteristic related to safety of use of the medical item and attaching a blank RFID tag to each of the selected identical medical items, each of the RFID tags having a serial number; storing information about the selected medical items, including the name and the characteristic related to safety of use in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory; after the blank RFID tags have been attached to all the identical medical items, reading the blank RFID tags of all the selected medical items at the same time to obtain the serial numbers of the RFID tags; and associating the serial numbers read from all the blank RFID tags of the identical medical items to the name and characteristic related to safety for that medical item stored in the database thereby identifying that medical item with the serial numbers of the read RFID tags. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A system for bulk encoding a plurality of medical items to track the medical items, at least one of the medical items having a human-readable label affixed to the medical item, the human-readable label having printed information that describes a characteristic of the medical item, the system comprising:
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a blank RFID tag attached to each of the medical items to be bulk encoded, each blank RFID tag having a different serial number; wherein each blank RFID tag has no human-readable information located thereon that is related to a characteristic related to safety of use of the medical item to which the blank RFID tag is attached; a nonvolatile memory device in which is stored a database of information including a name and a characteristic related to safety of use of each of the plurality of medical items to be bulk encoded; a container having a size large enough to hold a plurality of identical medical items for bulk encoding; an RFID reader having an interior reading space that is large enough to receive the container holding a plurality of identical medical items, the RFID reader configured to transmit activation energy to the RFID tags attached to the medical items in the container in response to receipt of a read control signal and that reads the serial numbers of all the RFID tags transmitted by the RFID tags in response to the receipt of the activation energy, the RFID reader providing the received serial numbers; and a processor programmed to communicate a read control signal to the RFID reader to have the RFID reader read all the RFID tags attached to the identical medical items in the tray, and the processor further programmed to receive the serial numbers of the read RFID tags and to control the memory to associate and store the received serial numbers in the data base in relation to the stored names and characteristic of all the identical medical items. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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Specification