New RFID Standard for Healthcare Industry Introduced

AIM, the worldwide industry association for the automatic identification industry, providing unbiased information, educational resources and standards to providers and users of these technologies for nearly half a century, announced today the release today of Medical Electrical Equipment & System Electromagnetic Immunity Test for Exposure to RFID Readers, a new standard that provides specialized guidance on the testing of non-implantable medical devices to determine if they are immune to emissions from radio frequency identification (RFID) systems.

The standard provides medical device manufactures and end-users with guidance on how to evaluate their devices for immunity to emissions from radio frequency identification (RFID) systems.  The test procedures in this document are based on experimental results from several AIM members.  Test protocols are included for the major commercial implementations of RFID as standardized by ISO, including LF, HF, and UHF RFID.  Both active and passive ISO RFID standards are covered in this document.

Members of AIM’s Healthcare Initiative Work Group (HCI) were made aware of a need for a specialized standard from the interactions identified in the early 2000s between RFID systems and non-implantable medical devices.  An ISO technical report, ISO 20017 (ISO/IEC TR 20017:2011), was published in 2011 that provided information about interactions between RFID and implantable medical devices.  However, ISO 20017 does not provide any guidance for non-implantable medical devices.  The new standard developed by AIM provides guidance for non-implantable medical devices and how to test for immunity to emissions from RFID systems.