(RFID World) Fenwal Inc. a medical technology company that serves worldwide in the area of blood collection, safety, availability and separation recently announced a 5-year contract agreement with Biolog-id. The contract allows Fenwal to exclusively market, sell and distribute the Biolog-id radio frequency identification blood tracking system across the United States and Europe. The system has already been cleared and marked in Europe and has recently been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agency for clearing to sell in the United States.
The Biolog-id system provides detailed and easily understandable information in real time simultaneously to both the patient’s hospital as well as well as to the blood collection site. This helps to manage blood samples keeping them at the correct temperature. It also helps to manage the blood inventories and to keep track of storage location of each blood unit. When the blood tracking is managed more systematically, it helps to match the blood sample with the correct patient need.
By eliminating manual steps that could result in human error, the Biolog-id system which uses radio waves to transfer data from electronic labels. The system also leads a more efficient process allowing both hospitals and transfusion collection sites to have immediate access to blood transfusion records so that patient needs can be easily met at the earliest possible time.
RFID technology as opposed to barcodes allow for the measuring of temperature at all times which is very important for blood transfusion medicine. In addition RFID readers can read multiple labels at any given time whereas bar codes can only read one label at a time. Bar code scanning requires the label to be directly in front of and in line with the scanner whereas rfid labels can be read through containers and from a further distance.
Dean Gregory, senior VP of Global Commercial Operations, for Fenwal stated that RFID technology has taken the reading and managing of blood unit samples to another level. He is pleased to partner with Biolog-id to work towards a more efficient and safer healthcare system.
Jean-Claude Mongrenier, chairman and chief executive officer for Biolog-id looks forward to working with Fenwal to help improve the healthcare system with the use of a comprehensive RFID solution that will keep inventory counts and maintain the health of blood transfusions like never before.
