The groundswell of radio frequency identification devices (RFID) in health care may be clouded by the stomping of Wal-Mart, but the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are quietly becoming one of the top innovators and users of RFID, and they’ll likely outpace other market segments in the very near future. Stripped of its media hype, RFID is essentially a tracking device. One might wonder what the big deal is. With the never-ending effort of improving patient safety and cutting costs, health care is certainly well-aware of the need to track its every activity. In an industry mandated by federal, state, county and local regulations, tracking is nothing new.

And yet, RFID offers a powerful benefit over other tracking technologies such as bar coding or manual processes. RFID can automatically trace any medical device, pharmaceutical or patient over a given period of time.

Because RFID tags have reading and writing capability, as well as sensors, an RFID-equipped medicine or surgical instrument can indicate in real-time whether the item has been introduced to contaminants, when and where it has moved over time, and environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity. As such, RFID enables what is called the four-dimensional supply chain.

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