After having both knees replaced, my father has earned the nickname “the titanium bear”. For months he sulked in front of the TV thinking only of his rising golf handicap. Implanet, a manufacturer of implantable medical devices hopes to keep my dad’s knees intact by using IBM RFID solutions to alert him to recalls. According to a recent press release, the company will embed the tags into knee and hip replacements and use them to alert patients to any product-related concerns.
Prior to shipping prosthetic parts, Implanet embeds an RFID tag with the device model, serial number and latest info enclosed. Prior to surgery, the hospital scans the tag and IBM’s WebSphere Sensor Events software uploads the information to a server. Patients are then given the tag ID for alerts.
In the past ReadWriteWeb covered RFID and its rocky road to consumer adoption. Nevertheless, the enterprise market continues to find new uses for RFID. In fact, this is not the first time where RFID tags have appeared in hospitals. Companies like Wavemark have been working with health institutions to track cardiology machines and other inventory. In this particular case, because the indexing process does not require speed or long distance accuracy, Implanet makes use of IBM’s RFID technologies.
