Product Completes Medical Device RFID Susceptibility Testing

March 20, 2012. MET Labs announced it has completed testing on the first product to be submitted to the Medical Device RFID Susceptibility Program. The Program—co-developed by MET Labs and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the auspices of AIM Healthcare Initiative (HCI)—is designed to determine potential adverse events of radio frequency identification (RFID) emissions on electronic medical devices.

The patient-worn battery-operated vital-sign monitoring device was tested at MET's Santa Clara, CA, laboratory. It passed six of seven tests, demonstrating a hard fault when subjected to 860-960 MHz frequency RFID at 54 V/m, as specified in ISO/IEC 18000-6 Type C.

Testing was performed with the RF parameters that emit the minimum and maximum occupied bandwidth. The testing ranged from 134.2 kHz at 160 A/m to 2.45 GHz at 54 V/m.

“This device and other devices that we are scheduled to test are subjected to worst case scenarios, to protect them from RFID interference in the healthcare environment,” said Ted Osinski, MET Labs RFID program manager. “The vendor now has the benefit to mitigate the problem and make the device safer.”

Medical device manufacturers that have not expressed interest in the past are still eligible for participation in the program.

MET Laboratories, www.metlabs.com.

See earlier news: IDI Launches Two Semiconductor Test Offerings