Application of UHF RFID Technology for Identification of Closely Spaced Medical Equipment

The global healthcare industry is transforming very quickly. For many years, healthcare providers have been addressing how to reduce errors that increase costs, lower quality of life for patients, and in a number of cases, have caused patient death. The paper discusses options for automated identification based on UHF RFID technology on stacked or very near objects, especially for use in healthcare. When using UHF RFID on closely spaced objects, such as test tubes, a particular problem arises. When two common UHF tag antennas are placed very near and parallel to each other, the structure becomes very similar to a folded dipole antenna. A solution based on testing the use of UHF RFID technology to identify medical test tubes is proposed in this paper.