The HIT company, Champion Healthcare Technologies, and the RFID company, VUEMED, have partnered to help hospitals comply with medical device tracking requirements. Together, they will offer a single platform that takes advantage of Unique Device Identifiers (UDIs), which are becoming increasingly important.

The FDA established a unique device identification system to appropriately identify medical devices through their distribution and use. When it’s fully implemented, the label on most devices will have a UDI in human- and machine-readable form.

Over the past couple of years, the FDA has mandated that manufacturers must label all implantable devices with a UDI and production number, which is a serial number and expiration date. By 2018 most health care supplies will have to be compliant with the regulation.

Champions’ UDITracker solution used in conjunction with VUEMED’s RFID-based technologies can help hospitals track tissue, devices, assets and people. However, not many hospitals are aware of the benefits that UDI can offer them.

They are often don’t know about the software and data capture devices — bar code scanning or RFID — that could potentially save them millions of dollars through better inventory management and risk mitigation.

Champion’s client, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in Louisiana, will be at The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management conference to discuss how they accurately track high-value devices such as tissue grafts, implants and other devices used in the operating room.

VEUMED’s client, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, will also be at the conference to show how UDI-compliant RFID solutions enable hospitals and manufacturers to instantly track recalled and expiring devices.

In the near future, new regulations on Meaningful Use of health information technology will require health care provides to capture UDIs in their EHRs. UDIs may also be listed on medical claims forms by 2022.

“Compliance will be a powerful reason to adopt a tracking platform, but the savings hospitals can achieve almost immediately should be incentive enough to act today,” Peter I. Casady, co-founder and CEO of Champion, said in a statement.

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