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.
To further aid a smooth workflow, we have developed an optional live cycle overview display board to show the cycle type and the last or next procedures performed or scheduled for that day. Positioned on the lab wall, this provides the lab team with an overview of the work for the day and is easily seen from the work areas. The display is configurable to the laboratory’s requirements.
RI Witness™ is part of the RI Elements™ suite of data system solutions from Research Instruments Ltd. RI Elements™ consists of five modules; the RI Witness™ system, Imaging Element, Data Capture Element, Traceability Element and Cryo Element. These highly configurable elements integrate seamlessly with each other and the patient database and adapt to established protocols. Either individually or combined, these products help facilitate smooth, efficient and secure processes in the modern laboratory.
RI Witness™ Patient Information (274.5 KiB, 1,114 hits)
Bridge Clinic - Reducing Human Error in IVF with Electronic Witnessing (581.8 KiB, 1,380 hits)
Cutting edge technology in a French ART laboratory (1.1 MiB, 614 hits)
Mouse Study Test Results (465.1 KiB, 1,336 hits)
RI Elements Brochure (845.5 KiB, 688 hits)
RI Product Catalogue (6.2 MiB, 934 hits)
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.