| Could Saw Rfid Tags Serve Health Care? Medical Connectivity Consulting - Wednesday February 22, 2006 |
| SAW stands for Surface Acoustic Wave technology that is used in a type of passive RFID tag that's been around since the 1970s. SAW tags use piezoelectric crystals with "reflectors" at predetermined intervals to represent a tag's data. The tags can be read from as far away as 20 meters, and can provide up to 2 foot positioning accuracy. Unlike some other tags, these can be read while mounted on metal and liquid containers. Oh, and they also transmit their temperature. There were no SAW RFID tags that I saw at HIMSS 06. The biggest RFID take-away for me at HIMSS was that there is no "best" RFID system or technology, it's all about matching the application to the technology. The cool thing about the SAW tags pictured at right (from Sandia Labs) is their size and resistance to gamma radiation and high temperatures. According to the bug put in my ear by Brad Sokol, this technology is well suited to tracking surgical instruments and medical devices like consumables and implantable devices. When imagining workflow automation through medical device connectivity, what about the autoclave as a medical device? The tracking system could track all the instruments (plus catheters, guide wires, and implantables) in a surgical suite - down to which one's are in the sterile field - ensure their sterilization, and even report their temperature. Sounds like just the thing ASP, 3M, Tuttnauer, Kimberly Clark, or Steris might want to do to differentiate or add value. Here's a technical paper from Sandia for you RFID rocket scientists. And for us mere mortals, this paper provides a nice general introduction to SAW-based tags. There's even a company that makes tags and readers |