Preliminary study of tracking and identifaction of in vitro fertilisation samples using RFID

In recent years Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has received considerable attention in the medical field, particularly as it is a major technology for automatic identification and tracking of medical supplies. RFID can help healthcare organizations to track and identify the medical samples in order to prevent medical errors and improve patient care. One of the drawbacks of RFID is blind spots. Blind spots are the regions within the maximum operating range of the RFID system where the RFID reader fails to read the RFID tag. In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) at the Vrije University Medical Center (VUMC) in Amsterdam are interested in the tracking, identification and who is processing the samples, which could lead to cost savings and error prevention. The samples are kept in metallic containers filled with liquid Nitrogen imitating a Faraday cage and hence this produces a blind spot. Preliminary measurement has been carry out to identify the effect of EM waves on the samples. An alternative design is proposed to overcome the blind spot problem. Theoretical results are presented to evaluate the effect of the metallic container to the return losses of antenna located inside the container. Moreover preliminary theoretical and experimental results for LOS measurements are given to demonstrate the suggested design.