Patent ID: 7175081

Claim:
An apparatus for tracking unit dose medical products, each of the medical products having a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag uniquely associated therewith, the apparatus comprising: a casing comprising a compartment for receiving one or more medical products therein; a reader for reading the RFID tags associated with the medical products in the compartment, the reader including a plurality of RFID antennas disposed in the casing; and a processor coupled to the reader for receiving and processing readings of the RFID tags in the compartment to identify the medical products in the compartment, and wherein the processor identifies a medical product removed from the compartment by determining a difference between readings of the RFID tags in the compartment taken before and after the medical product is removed from the compartment, and wherein the processor monitors the time period between the time a medical product is removed and the time the medical product is to be administered to a patient if the medical product is of limited stability.