Small inlay allows pharmaceutical labeling across materials and form factors

Sep 17, 2021French RFID label company Tageos released a small footprint UHF RFID inlay called EOS-202 U9, designed for pharmaceutical tracking. According to the company, the new inlay is intended for any application where the labels can be applied directly to single-use products, such as vials and syringes.

The company calls the EOS-202 U9 the smallest RFID inlay for medical and pharmaceutical applications. It measures 20 millimeters by 10 millimeters (0.79 inch by 0.39 inch) and won Dose-ID Consortium ARC Spec S certification of Auburn University RFID Laboratory. The inlay is intended to drive adoption of RFID tagging for pharmaceutical companies and other players in the healthcare supply chain, and is now available in dry, wet and paper formats in high volumes.

The use of RFID to automatically identify pharmaceuticals and devices is growing, the company reports, with more and more pharmaceutical companies labeling products at the point of manufacture. In fact, pharmaceutical customers reap the benefits of inventory and supply chain tracking that an RFID tag can offer by reading the labels as goods are received, stored, and administered. RFID solutions, such as Checking the kitThe Medication Tracking System allows companies to know where their products are and when they are due to expire.

Dose-ID is a certification body for tags in the pharmaceutical market. The consortium is working with the Auburn RFID Lab to ensure that new UHF RFID products meet the ARC Spec S specification for use with drugs and medical devices. However, there are few uniform tag options that apply to all form factors. Due to the small size of single drug units, the presence of liquids in some cases, and multiple surface materials ranging from glass to cardboard packaging, there are few universal inlays that work for all products, explains. Chris Reese, Product Manager at Tageos. management.

Chris Reese

This, Reese explains, means label converters must create labels with a variety of inlays to meet the requirements of each product. In many cases, he says, the labels that deliver the highest performance are too big for the items they’re used to track. Due to size and performance challenges, labels are often applied to packaging rather than directly to products.

Over the past three months, Tageos has designed the EOS-202 U9 inlay to deliver Spec S-grade performance in a small form factor, the company reports. It relies NXPUCODE 9 IC and a small footprint antenna design. The antenna measures 20 millimeters by 10 millimeters (0.8 inch by 0.4 inch), while a wet inlay with adhesive measures 22 millimeters by 12 millimeters (0.9 inch by 0.5 inch). With the UCODE 9 chip, the inlay provides features that include auto-tuning technology, unique brand identifiers, and pre-serialized 96-bit electronic product code memory.

The inlay has been tested on all types of items and materials according to ARC Spec S for medical and pharmaceutical applications, says Jeremy Wade, Tageos business development director for the Americas, and has proven that it can read labels at a rate close to 100%. This quality of performance is consistent, he adds, whether the label is used on clear or amber liquid glass vials, clear glass powder vials, plastic or cyclic olefin polymer syringes, plastic syringe caps or plastic seal-fill-blow vials. Because of this versatility, the company expects inlays to automatically identify individual units in hospitals and pharmacies, as well as throughout the supply chain.

The Dose-ID consortium, which helped create the Sec S certification requirements, was founded by Kit Check, the largest supplier of hardware and software used to read such labels in the healthcare environment. Spec S provides performance thresholds for pharmaceuticals used with Kit Check applications. Prior to Spec S’s release, Reese explains, multiple RFID solutions had been used to enable medication tracking in healthcare environments, and the lack of a single universal specification made deployment more complex. “Our goal,” he says, was to achieve Spec S standards with the smallest dimensions possible. “

Jeremy Wade

The new inlay “fixes a few issues,” Wade says. This allows pharmaceutical companies to label their products directly, he explains, while allowing processors to purchase one type of inlay for all their needs or purposes instead of having to source multiple. inlays for very specific uses. Traditionally, processors often had to customize inlays for specific pharmaceutical customers; some may require very small labels, while others may need to apply wet inlays and others may prefer shrink sleeve labels.

The company offers the inlays on rollers in one of two orientation options: either as an introductory format with the wide edge of the inlay, or as a narrow edge introduction, in which the more narrow edge. small of the inlay corresponds to the smallest edge of the roll. This allows fabricators to choose how to assemble labels using inlay rollers. Some processors need the narrow-edged attack format for their label manufacturing process, Wade explains.

Tageos reports that the new inlay enables high performance in its small size, based on its proprietary antenna design created in the company’s rapid product development process. The 90-day design, in this case, required extensive work and testing in an anechoic chamber to meet the complex requirements of the specification, Reese explains. The integrated UCODE 9 chip enables high sensitivity values, he notes, allowing for a smaller antenna and thus helping the inlay achieve its small size.

Reese says several companies now have samples of the overlay on hand, which they are currently testing and using. These companies include converters, as well as pharmaceutical companies and system integrators like Kit Check. Tageos expects to see commercially available labels using the inlays on the market by the fourth quarter of this year, and he reports that customer feedback has been good.

Since its development, the EOS-202 U9 inlay has gained the attention of other markets for applications other than pharmaceuticals and healthcare, Reese reports, notably for tracking retail cosmetics. Some pharmaceutical companies have reportedly delayed adoption of RFID until inlays are available that could accomplish tagging of the full range of materials they produce. “It helps the technology adoption process,” he says.