At a demonstration conducted last week at the RFID Health Care Industry Adoption Summit in Washington, D.C., Owens-Illinois item-level embedded tags powered by Impinj, Inc.'s chips achieved 100% reliability when reading and writing tags at high speed on pharmaceutical bottles.
In pharmaceutical manufacturing and fill-line demonstrations, a near-field UHF Gen 2 RFID solution, comprising Impinj's Speedway reader and Owens-Illinois' Healthcare Packaging Division's item-level embedded RFID tags powered by Impinj's Monza chips, achieved 100% reliability when reading and writing tags. 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 Seattle-based 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 stand-alone 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."
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