In pharmaceutical manufacturing and fill-line demonstrations at the RFID Health Care Industry Adoption Summit in Washington, D.C., a near-field UHF Gen 2 RFID solution, comprising Seattle-based Impinj's Speedway reader and Owens-Illinois’ Toledo, Ohio) item-level embedded RFID tags powered by Impinj's Monza chips, achieved 100% reliability when reading and writing tags at high speed on pharmaceutical bottles. In the first demonstration, the UHF Gen 2 system programmed 96-bit EPC numbers at rates exceeding 600 tags per minute on bottles containing the four most common dose types -- liquids, gel caps, solids and powder. In the second demonstration, the system developed by Impinj and Owens-Illinois flawlessly read 600 tags per minute on cases containing 48 individually tagged bottles and a case-level tag.
"These results are a true breakthrough in item-level RFID implementation," said Michael Liard, research director, RFID & Contactless at ABI Research. "The demonstrations validate that a near-field UHF RFID solution exists and that it provides remarkable performance and reliability. The focus on RFID as part of the packaging, and not a standalone label attached to the packaging at the item level in pharmaceuticals, is both innovative and exciting. With these solutions being made available, we can expect to see increased interest among pharmaceutical manufacturers and retailers evaluating item-level RFID."
Source: Impinj, Inc.
