BULK ENCODING OF MEDICAL ITEMS USING RFID TAGS
First Claim
1. A method for encoding a medical item received at a healthcare facility with an RFID tag for identifying and tracking the received medical item while in the healthcare facility, comprising:
- receiving the medical item having a name and a characteristic related to safety of use of the medical item;
storing information about the received medical item, including the name and the characteristic in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory;
attaching a blank RFID tag to the medical item, the RFID tag having a serial number;
after the blank RFID tag has been attached to the medical item, reading the blank RFID tag while attached to the medical item to obtain the serial number of the RFID tag; and
associating the serial number read from the RFID tag when it was attached to the medical item to the name and characteristic related to safety in the database thereby uniquely identifying that medical item with the RFID tag serial number.
1 Assignment
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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.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method for encoding a medical item received at a healthcare facility with an RFID tag for identifying and tracking the received medical item while in the healthcare facility, comprising:
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receiving the medical item having a name and a characteristic related to safety of use of the medical item; storing information about the received medical item, including the name and the characteristic in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory; attaching a blank RFID tag to the medical item, the RFID tag having a serial number; after the blank RFID tag has been attached to the medical item, reading the blank RFID tag while attached to the medical item to obtain the serial number of the RFID tag; and associating the serial number read from the RFID tag when it was attached to the medical item to the name and characteristic related to safety in the database thereby uniquely identifying that medical item with the RFID 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 received at a healthcare facility with RFID tags for identifying and tracking the received medical items while in the healthcare facility, comprising:
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receiving the plurality of medical items each having a name and a characteristic related to safety of use of the medical item; storing information about the received medical items, including the name and the characteristic in a computer-readable database located in a non-volatile memory; selecting a plurality of identical medical items from those medical items received and attaching a blank RFID tag to each of the selected identical medical items, each of the RFID tags having a serial number; 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)
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14. A system for bulk encoding medical items received at a healthcare facility to track the medical items while in the healthcare facility, at least one of the medical items having a label affixed to the medical item, the label having printed text that describes a characteristic of the medical item, the system comprising:
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blank RFID tags, wherein a blank RFID tag is attached to each of the medical items received, each blank RFID tag having a serial number; wherein each blank RFID tag has no human-readable information located thereon that is related to a characteristic of 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 received medical items; a tray having a size large enough to hold a plurality of identical received medical items for bulk encoding; an RFID reader having an interior reading space that is large enough to receive the tray 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 tray 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 (15, 16, 17)
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Specification