RFID offers smart route to medical safety

New medical device safety testing technology developed by Rigel Medical, part of the Seaward Group, incorporates significant benefits for test engineers, service firms and contractors involved in the electrical safety testing of electromedical equipment in hospitals. The innovative new Braincell concept introduced by Rigel Medical uses smart RFID (radio frequency identification) data tags that remain attached to medical equipment to provide fast and efficient storage of test information. When used with the Rigel 277 electromedical safety analyser, the new technology extends the concept of traditional bar code test systems for the automatic identification and testing of medical equipment.

While most barcodes primarily contain a single ID number, Braincell smart tags have a much larger data storage capacity.

As a result, all product information including asset ID, test class, site and location, previous test date, test engineer, applied part configuration and a four-line comment field can all be recorded and remain permanently with the item.

In this way, the Braincell contains all the required information to enable fast one-touch re-testing of medical equipment and can also be used as a means of automated asset tracking of equipment around a building.

Two-way communication between the Braincell and the Rigel 277 Plus using a simple read/write device facilitates automatic re-testing, with the smart tags having the ability to store test data transmitted back from the instrument.

As a result, service records are updated automatically after each test routine and remain with the equipment for its lifetime.

The Braincells are completely self-contained, strong and durable and do not require line of sight visibility for test data retrieval or transmission.

As a result, the RFID tag tag can be applied either internally or externally to a medical device thus making it less susceptible to theft or loss during cleaning.

The Braincells and the handheld read/write module are available as accessories to the multipurpose Rigel 277 Plus.

Specifically designed to test in accordance with all main industry standards, including IEC/EN60601-1, MDA DB9801 and IEC/EN61010, the Rigel 277 Plus can test