Technology
Tagged for Temps
Active, passive RFID tags free the cold chain from wires.
By Anastasia Thrift
Managing Editor
Transportation systems wired for
temperature monitoring are
going wireless. Several companies
are pooling their resources to meet the
cold-chain demands of medical and
pharmaceutical packagers through active
and passive RFID.
A partnership between AeroScout
(Redwood City, CA) and DHL (San
Mateo, CA) has used WiFi-based active
RFID technology to track pharmaceutical products through the supply chain for
a leading healthcare company. The tag
producer and the international cargo
company teamed with Microlise (
Nottingham, United Kingdom) to monitor
temperature fluctuation for a trial run
between Belgium and Sweden last May.
Temperature and vehicle location data
were broadcast via GPS from AeroScout
tags to Microlise monitors. The strategy
aimed to give supply-chain visibility to
multiple custodians along the shipping
route. Microlise’s Transport Management
Center software enabled monitoring
through Web browsers.
This real-time location system software
represents the bulk of advancing RFID
technology in the year to come, according to Raghu Das, CEO of smart-pack-aging consulting company IDTechEx. In
his predictions for 2008, Das said such
medical usage of active RFID tagging
still has untapped potential.
“Fully active versions are larger and
more expensive, but can be reused such
as with the AeroScout tag,” Das says.
“There are many solutions but not many
implementations of it in the pharma
cold-supply chain yet.”
In a second example of utilizing RFID
for cold-chain management, Intelligent
Devices Inc. (Ottawa, ON, Canada) and
Evidencia LLP (Memphis, TN) collaborated to introduce a passive RFID,
probed-temperature recorder called the
Log-Ic ThermoProbeRF. Released last
December, ThermoProbeRF has a
wireless capacity for checking and
downloading detailed time and
temperature history.
With the Log-Ic ThermoProbeRF,
drug manufacturers can program for
time and temperature alarms via user-friendly software, according to the two
companies. They say they have a powerful, easy-to-use monitor that can establish the core temperature of dry ice
shipments of temperature-sensitive
pharmaceuticals.
“The main benefit is the ability to use
the device to monitor core packaging
temperature and therefore to have true
temperature readouts, and not ambient
The Log-Ic ThermoProbeRF attaches to a
passive RFID tag to provide the core temp
of packages.
temperature,” Alex Salomon, general
manager of Evidencia, says. “It’s huge in
terms of the service and quality of service they provide.”
The small scale of the technology
accommodates many package shapes and
sizes. Its credit-card-size thickness could
allow for better stacking and less breakage
than nonwireless temperature recorders.
“Our tag lies flat on the polyurethane
and offers extreme resistance to stacking
or crushing,” Salomon says. A handheld
reader detects the thermometer’s input
from up to 400 meters away.
“Commercial passive RFID tags with
sensors are very rare,” Salomon says. He
offers evidence taken from customer
feedback, experience, trade shows, and
publications. From this, Intelligent
Devices and Evidencia have determined
that their product is unique. “This is a
tiny field,” Salomon says. ■
