The first two injectable drugs with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags from Sandoz Inc. will be available to U.S. hospitals starting in October 2020 through a joint effort with Kit Check, Inc., an electronic drug tracking organization.
The medicines included paralytics to relax muscles for surgical procedures as well as other medical operations. The company confirmed that additional Sandoz medications are planned to be released publicly to Kit Check’s hospital partners by early 2021.
Who is Sandoz?
Sandoz is a pioneer in generic medicines for oncology internationally, complementing leadership roles in generic anti-infectives and biosimilars. The Sandoz oncology portfolio consists of over 50 drugs that reach patients in almost 100 countries and covers the full spectrum from chemotherapy to more focused biologics through hormones and supportive treatment.
Who is Kit Check?
At more than 500 hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, Kit Check provides RFID-based drug inventory monitoring and automatic tray handling. The tags are attached in trays and kits to syringes, needles, bags, and other packets of medicine and equipment, and then used to trace each medicine that travels through hospital pharmacies.
Why favoring RFID technology in the pharmaceutical industry?
In order to ensure consistent delivery of high-quality injectable drugs to hospital patients who will need them, Sandoz seeks to complement their existing work across innovative outlets.
According to the firms, the development is intended to help hospital pharmacies mitigate risk and better facilitate patient care in hospitals by offering real-time inventory data, prompt monitoring of expiration of drugs and recalls, and assistance in automated long-term stock replenishment.
Historically, in the patented scanning stations of Kit Check, physicians had to affix RFID labels on bottles and syringes of the drug to be scanned. Bottles will reach hospitals with the RFID tag inserted in the dosage packaging straight off the assembly line with the introduction of Sandoz pre-tagged drugs. This provides physicians with an added level of cost and time savings.
In addition to keeping costs low, ensuring drugs are easily accessible, particularly after a pandemic, is vital to patient safety as healthcare services are already being challenged and exhausted.
RFID’s importance in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry
Healthcare services are critical areas where RFID technologies can be used. Monitoring and locating medical supplies, physicians, nurses, patients, ensuring protection by correctly matching mother-to-child in newborn units, more effectively organizing business operations, more accurately planning monthly report of stocks, and combining them with other systems are among the most important functions of RFID in healthcare thanks to its capacity in improving the efficiency of health care facilities.
In the healthcare industry, the use of RFID makes it much easier for staff, such as nurses and physicians, to serve individuals more successfully without any error. Real-time storage of medical records in the hospital database helps hospital services to efficiently use this data. The quality of service provided by hospitals is expected to improve as a result. In terms of stock management, with the opportunity to count easily, you can have up-to-date and accurate product information. The protection of the facility can be enhanced and the incidents in which equipment is located and misplaced in the incorrect section will thus be diminished. Unauthorized access and exit to areas where critical drugs and devices are stored should be eliminated more smoothly in terms of safety. And, as a result, by minimizing the time wasted on locating medication and injecting patients, patient satisfaction would increase.
