Pilot shows safety benefits of RFID
The results of a three-month pilot scheme carried out by Aegate show that fraudulent medicines can be identified at the point of dispensing, thereby increasing patient safety and improving the service provided by pharmacists.
The results of the pilot confirm that radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and printed barcodes can be mass-deployed, highlight opportunities to support the dispensing process and provide compelling evidence of the value of uniquely identifying medicines. Forty-four pharmacies across England and Wales took part in the scheme between October 2004 and January 2005, together with six drug manufacturers, including Merck Generics UK, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Schering Health Care and Solvay.
More than 180,000 pharmaceutical products, ranging from needles to Nurofen, were scanned at the point of dispensing, and approximately 20,000 were tagged with either a barcode or an RFID tag containing a unique number. When checked by the pharmacist using Aegate's custom-built scanner, the drug was authenticated if it matched details on a secure database and rejected if not recognised.
In the UK, 11% of hospital admissions are due to erros in medication, and there is a growing problem of fraudulent drugs. The pilot scheme has shown authentication at the point of dispensing to be a simple scanning process that can reduce the risk of errors and as alert dispensers to illegal, expired or recalled products, says Aegate.
The trial also highlighted improvements that could be made to the way in which drug recalls are carried out. Several recalls occurred during the pilot, and as a result real-time notices were provided to dispensers as they scanned the items. This has led to one in four community pharmacies continuing their use of the scanner, even though the pilot scheme has ended.
'This pilot has proven that RFID can contribute towards improved patient safety in pharmacies, and that the applications that can be developed to help build a safer NHS for patients are endless,' said Ross Hall, ceo, Auto-ID Services, BT. 'We're very excited by the results of the trial and we're even more excited by the endless possibilities RFID can offer for further improvements in healthcare in the future.'