A Practical Assessment of Integrating RFID Into Over-the-Counter Liquid Suspension Supply Chains

Using Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for full transparency and traceability in a pharmaceutical supply chain can be a challenging goal to accomplish. The susceptibility of RFID to dielectric materials poses significant challenges in implementing a successful RF-enabled system. Within the pharmaceutical industry, those dielectric materials can be the constituents of a drug, physical state of the drug or even the packaging. This study builds off a previous publication by the authors highlighting the attenuations that happen across different drug formulations. This paper presents an experimental design using three commercially available UHF RFID tags, which their manufacturers claim are designed for small products in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. The tags were tested on two control samples and four liquid suspension over-the-counter drug formulations. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between the pH and conductivity of these products and the performance of RFID tags, including tag sensitivity and theoretical read range, with the ultimate objective of enhancing RFID efficiency in asset management systems. Although there were no correlations between RFID performance, conductivity, or pH, there was a significant difference in the performance of the tags attached to the ibuprofen liquid suspension when it contained dye in comparison to the ibuprofen sample that did not.