Medical Tool and Pharmaceutical Tracking using Near-Field Technology

In today’s resource-constrained healthcare environment, the ability to reliably track medical tools, pharmaceuticals, and consumables is more than a logistical advantage; it’s a critical operational requirement. 

Hospitals and healthcare facilities globally are facing unprecedented strain, staff shortages, rising patient volumes, and increasing demand for real-time responsiveness. In emergencies, essential assets can easily be misplaced, delayed, or lost due to lack of visibility. 

Every minute spent searching for critical equipment translates to delayed care and increased risk. 

RAIN RFID has long been proven in industrial and supply chain environments, and its adoption in healthcare is accelerating.  

In 2023, over 600 hospitals in the U.S. deployed more than 50 million RFID tags to track anesthesia medications. The results were an improvement in inventory accuracy, reduced waste, and enhanced patient safety. 

In healthcare workflows, it is not enough to know that an item is somewhere in a department or room. Hospital staff need to know precisely which vial or tool is at which workstation and which item was removed, returned, or replaced. 

Achieving that level of certainty demands RFID read zones that are confined to a small footprint, always-on, and repeatably reading at critical interaction points. 

This is where near-field technology becomes essential. 

Designed for precise, short-range operation, these antennas deliver uniform read coverage with no dead zones, ensuring reliable item-level tracking while preventing unintended reads, even in environments with liquids and metal. 

Healthcare environments are uniquely challenging for RFID: 

Times-7's True NearField™ Series are engineered to thrive in exactly these conditions. Unlike generic antennas, our True NearField™ antennas such as the A1115, A1130 and A1163 offer:

At the beginning of the RFID revolution, the dominant question was, “How do I read more tags?” In this case far-field antennas are excellent as they act like a “floodlight” broadcasting energy over a wide area, capable of room scale, dense asset tracking. 

But today the question is, “How do I read this tag and only this tag?” Here, near-field antennas create a confined magnetic field, often just a few centimetres. When a tagged item enters this “bubble”, it is read with high certainty.