Products - RI Elements™
RI Witness™
RI Witness™ uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to monitor all critical work carried out in the laboratory, creating a complete record of each stage of a patient’s cycle. RI Witness™ is watching, tracking and recording all of the time and locks the patient’s identity to the sperm, eggs and embryos at every stage of the treatment. The system also actively prevents patient samples coming into proximity with those of other patients. The system is designed to give everyone peace of mind that the best possible processes are being employed.
NEW – Auto Sign in Key Fob
To help streamline the identification of each operator, RI has introduced an Operators Identification Key Fob. The Key Fob provides an alternative way to identify an operator at a work area. Normally an operator would log on by selecting their name from a list of operators displayed on the touch screen and then enter a 4 digit pin code. Now they can simply hold the Key Fob briefly in the vicinity of the RI Witness™ Reader and the system will detect it and automatically log in their details.
For more details please contact RI.
Features
RI Witness™ utilises RFID technology to track and record patient samples at each step of the IVF process as an essential safeguard and a reassurance to laboratory staff.
RI Witness™ readers and touch screens are installed at every work area both inside and outside the laboratory where patients or patient samples are treated. Self adhesive circular, square and rectangular RFID tags are available to fit containers such as Petri dishes or test tubes that will subsequently contain patient samples. These tags enable the readers to register that there are containers in the work area and through these tags a patient’s identity is monitored at every stage of the treatment. At the same time, the system captures information regarding the cycle progress and operator actions. All information recorded by RI Witness™ is sent to a common server for patient records.
The RI Witness™ system monitors every instance when gametes or embryos are transferred from one container to the next and ensures that only one patient can be worked on at one time, safeguarding sample identity. If at any time, samples from incompatible patients are introduced into the same work area, RI Witness™ warns the laboratory personnel both visually and audibly. Monitoring is constant, so an identity check can never be overlooked.
Finally, to safeguard the beginning and end of the cycle, RI Witness™ card readers may be placed in treatment rooms. When the patient’s RFID card is placed in the card reader the system automatically displays the patient details to the embryologist in the laboratory, to verify that the identity of the female matches that of the eggs and embryos.
RI Witness™ is highly configurable to a laboratory’s existing protocols and can be easily incorporated into daily routines without additional steps – monitoring is constant, integrated and secure.
RI Witness™ is part of the Elements™ suite of data system solutions available from Research Instruments Ltd. It integrates seamlessly with RI Tracker™ for consumable traceability and RI Data™ for information capture. Combined, these products help facilitate smooth, efficient and secure processes in the modern laboratory.
| Work areas: | One work area required for each critical working location
Microsoft Windows based PC included in work area Available as heated or unheated RFID reader frequency: 13.56MHz |
| Barcode compatibility: (Traceability Element) | Compatible with GS1 barcodes (GS1-128). |
| Barcode scanner: (Traceability Element) | Compatible with USB (Keyboard wedge) fixed and hand-held scanners |
| Camera compatibility: (Imaging Element) | Research Instruments’ DC1 & DC2 digital cameras and other digital cameras Analogue cameras. |
| Elements Manager (client software) PC system requirements: | Operating systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP*. |
| Server / network requirements: | Microsoft SQL server required (not supplied)
Network point required for each work area |
*Starter editions are not supported
RI Witness™ Patient Information (274.5 KiB, 738 hits)
RI Witness EU Declaration of Conformity.pdf (64.7 KiB, 439 hits)
RI Witness™ Comparison Chart (215.2 KiB, 1,012 hits)
Bridge Clinic - Reducing Human Error in IVF with Electronic Witnessing (581.8 KiB, 899 hits)
Cutting edge technology in a French ART laboratory (1.1 MiB, 258 hits)
Mouse Study Test Results (465.1 KiB, 586 hits)
“I certainly feel that we are now doing absolutely everything that we can to satisfy our patient’s worries, and numerous patients have informed us that they feel better knowing that this safeguard, RI Witness™, is in place.”
Shaun Kelly, Overlake Reproductive Health – USA
“RI Witness has improved efficiency by streamlining our working practice – lab procedures are performed at the optimum time with a real-time Witness. The ease of operation is great and Witness has also proved to be a versatile audit tool.”
Sophie Jewitt, Gateshead Fertility Unit – UK
“I am a Senior Embryologist at the Herts and Essex Fertility Centre and I have had experience of using IVF witness for over three years now.
IVF Witness has made a dramatic difference to our working practice in the laboratory at the Herts and Essex Fertility Centre, as it eliminates the need for non-critical steps, such as sperm preparations, to be double witnessed by another embryologist which is laborious and time consuming in our busy working centre. The Witness system creates a designated work station in each flow hood where our clinical work is conducted, and the use of radio-frequency tags allows patients gametes to be ‘labelled’ as they pass through different stages in the laboratory, with each operator having their own protected username and password. The ‘working areas’ ensure that only one patients gametes are worked on by any given operator at any given time, acting to reassure embryologists and give patients extra confidence in a secure system which safeguards their precious gametes and embryos at all times in the laboratory.
The system is easy to use and to introduce to new staff members, and the witness reports generated at the conclusion of every treatment cycle provides an at-a-glance copy of which staff member has been involved in every step of the patients’ treatment, as well as recording the time and date of procedures which fulfils regulatory requirements.
The Witness system has been positively received by our patients and staff alike. I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to work in a centre which doesn’t use this system in the future, as safety of the patient is paramount to our working practice as embryologists, and this extra security can only be of benefit in reassuring patients that we are taking every step to offer them the very best care possible.”
Lynne Glover, Herts and Essex Fertilty – UK
Q: What is RFID?
A. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify objects. Labels with tiny microchips embedded into them are attached to all plastic-ware such culture dishes, test tubes, patient identity cards etc. before being assigned to a patient. These microchips are read by the RI Witness™ sensors.
There is no need to directly scan the labels, the whole process is automatic and many tags can be read simultaneously.Q: How does the RFID label transmit the information?
A: RI Witness™ uses RFID tags, which are made up of a microchip with an antenna, and an interrogator or reader with an antenna. The reader sends out electromagnetic waves and the tag antenna is tuned to receive these waves. The RFID tag draws power from field created by the reader and uses it to power the microchip’s circuits. The microchip then modulates the waves that the tag sends back to the reader and the reader converts the new waves into digital data.
Q: Are there any health risks associated with RFID and radio waves?
A: RI Witness™ RFID uses a radio frequency similar to the signals received by your car radio. RI has conducted exhaustive Mouse Embryo Assay (MEA) to demonstrate that RI Witness™ RFID does not have any detrimental effect on the development of embryos. These tests used radio waves which are 700 times stronger than that used in the actual product. Competitor products use red light barcode scanners. Research has suggested that red light can have a deleterious effect on embryo development in Mouse Embryo Assays1.
Q: Why is RFID better than using bar codes?
A: The most significant difference is that barcodes use line-of-sight red laser technology . That is, a scanner has to “see” the barcode to read it, which means it is necessary to orientate the barcode towards a scanner for it to be read. Radio Frequency Identification, by contrast, doesn’t require line of sight. RFID tags can be read as long as they are within range of a reader. In addition, multiple RFID tags can be read at the same time, meaning that a whole collection of items can be identified together. RI Witness™ uses this ability to automatically check everything that is brought into the working area.
Q: Why RFID?
A: Other methods currently employed to match patients’ sperm, oocytes and embryos, rely on the user remembering to make some kind of check, this can be prone to human error, and if not done correctly, can give a false record. RI Witness™ uses RFID technology to provide a level of security that should eradicate errors. RFID technology monitors everything in every work area, every second of every day. RFID offers an extremely large number of unique identities. This means that each sample container can have its own UID and that procedures can be tracked in detail. The system knows exactly what has happened to the samples and which containers were used. Lastly, the communication between tag and reader is very secure. So secure in fact that RFID evidence can be submitted in a court of law, where barcode evidence cannot.