Development of Identification System for Surgical Instruments Using UHF Band RFID and Low-Intensity Antennae

Post-op vestigial remnant of surgical instruments in the body is a very serious problem. The current two-dimensional symbol system is being used to help manage this problem. However, the two-dimensional symbols have to be identified one at a time, since the symbols are a sort of printed matter. An HF band passive RFID system was also proposed. This system also had problems in identifying the signals of a large number of surgical instruments in bulk, since the scope of its identification area was relatively small. To improve the deficiencies of this system, a UHF band passive RFID system was developed. The authors have also proposed a new low-intensity antennae for the UHF band passive RFID system. This new system cannot radiate an electrical field strong enough to interfere with medical equipment and should not pose a problem to any electronic equipment in the operating room. From our experimental results using 50 surgical instruments, all the instruments were identified in less than one second with this new RFID system, even when the instruments were covered with water residue. These results are very promising and indicate that the proposed RFID system will be an improvement to the surgical instrument management systems currently being used. This new system will also undoubtedly reduce the workload of surgical nurses, while reducing human error in the operating room.