Applying radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in transfusion medicine

ISO/IEC 18000-3 mode 1 standard 13.56 MHz RFID tags have been accepted by the International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as data carriers to integrate with and augment ISBT 128 barcode data carried on blood products. The use of 13.56 MHz RFID carrying ISBT 128 data structures allows the global deployment and use of RFID, supporting both international transfer of blood and international disaster relief. The deployment in process at the BloodCenter of Wisconsin and testing at the University of Iowa Health Center is the first FDA-permitted implementation of RFID throughout in all phases of blood banking, donation through transfusion. RFID technology and equipment selection will be discussed along with FDA-required RF safety testing; integration with the blood enterprise computing system and required RFID tag performance. Tag design and survivability is an issue due to blood bag centrifugation and irradiation. Deployment issues will be discussed. Use of RFID results in significant return on investment over the use of barcodes in the blood center operations through labor savings and error reduction.