Enhanced UHF RFID tags for drug tracing

Area of Science:

• Engineering
• Supply Chain Management
• Electromagnetics

Background:

• Item-level tracing is critical in healthcare, especially for pharmaceuticals.
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology offers a solution for supply chain transparency and counterfeit detection.
• Challenges exist due to electromagnetic interference and varying tag requirements in pharmaceutical checkpoints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the performance of commercial UHF RFID tags in pharmaceutical supply chain applications.
• To define guidelines for the electromagnetic design of advanced RFID tags.
• To design, realize, and test a new enhanced RFID tag based on the developed guidelines.

Main Methods:

• Performance evaluation of various commercial UHF RFID tags across different pharmaceutical supply chain stages.
• Development of electromagnetic design guidelines for high-performance RFID tags.
• Design, fabrication, and testing of a novel enhanced RFID tag.

Main Results:

• Commercial UHF RFID tags exhibit critical performance limitations in pharmaceutical supply chains.
• The developed design guidelines enable the creation of enhanced RFID tags.
• The newly designed tag demonstrates high performance, even under critical operating conditions.

Conclusions:

• Item-level tracing systems using RFID can be successfully implemented in challenging pharmaceutical environments.
• The study provides a roadmap for designing superior UHF RFID tags for healthcare applications.
• Adherence to the identified design principles is recommended for future RFID tag development.