“Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) HIBC for Product Identification” (also known as ANSI/HIBC 4.0) has been given final approval by ANSI.
In ANSI/HIBC 4.0, the Health Industry Business Communications Council (HIBCC, Phoenix) recommends that 13.56 Mhz High Frequency (HF) be adopted for healthcare item-level tagging, specifically because its smaller read range is less likely to result in electromagnetic interference (EMI) with medical devices.
The RFID standard was already in early development phases when, in 2008, the “Journal of the American Medical Association” (JAMA) published the results of a study in 2008 with medical equipment and devices in critical care environments from RFID technologies. The study concluded that ultra high frequency (UHF) from RFID and UHF interfered with medical devices in 63 percent of the tests conducted.
The new standard was developed by HIBCC, an accredited global standards development organization that was founded to promote patient safety by creating industry-supported non-proprietary standards for healthcare product identification.
