Aegate pilot shows RFID benefits

The results of the three-month pilot confirm that radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and printed barcodes can be mass-deployed and that pharmacists are keen to gain the advantages of this technology. They also 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 pilot between October 2004 and January 2005. These included independent community pharmacies, pharmacy chains, hospital pharmacies and doctors’ dispensaries. Six drug manufacturers also took part, 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. Approximately 20,000 products 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 recognized.

In the UK, 11% of all hospital admissions are due to medication errors, and there is a growing problem of fraudulent drugs. The pilot has shown that authentication at the point of dispensing is a simple scanning process and can reduce the risk of errors as well as alert dispensers to illegal, expired or recalled products before they are given to the patient.

This is important in light of increasing concerns about the level of dispensing errors being made, particularly as the UK Department of Health has set a target of reducing errors by 40%.

The trial also highlighted improvements that could be made to the way 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 one in four community pharmacies to keep using the scanner even though the pilot has now ended.

“This pilot has shown that mass serialization of medicines combined with a simple scanning process can greatly reduce both errors and illegal medicines before they are dispensed to the patient,” said Ian Rhodes, CEO of Aegate.

“This process is well aligned with the Government’s eHealth agenda. As the next investments in eHealth technology start to take effect across the NHS, i.e. implementation of broadband and electronic prescriptions, these three elements will create a major advance in patient safety.”

Aegate’s system is technology independent, meaning it is compatible with a wide range of RFID and barcode based mass serialization approaches. In the pilot, for both RFID tagged and barcoded products, the average response time was under one second. During this time, the information on the tag was verified via a broadband connection to a secure database and then relayed back to the scanner.