Avery Dennison’s Tiny RFID Tag Enhances Pharma Safety

Avery Dennison has introduced the AD Minidose U9XM, a high-memory UHF RFID inlay and tag designed specifically for the unique identification of compact pharmaceutical and healthcare items, including syringes, vials, and various packaging formats.

These inlays are ideal for source tagging, end-to-end traceability, and product authentication. Approved by Auburn University’s RFID Lab for healthcare applications, the AD Minidose U9XM stands out as one of the smallest available and meets ARC category S standards for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

With enhanced memory capacity, these tags allow converters, system integrators, healthcare providers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers to store additional product details such as expiration dates and batch/lot numbers directly on the item. This capability ensures reliable access to essential information throughout the supply chain without needing frequent cloud lookups, improving tracking efficiency and dependability. According to the company, this data storage also aids in verifying product authenticity and helps prevent counterfeit products from entering the supply chain. Furthermore, the availability of accurate and accessible product information contributes to enhanced patient safety and care quality.

The NXP U9XM chip at the heart of these inlays includes a self-adjust feature for improved performance, providing high read reliability even when small, tagged items are packed closely together. The AD Minidose U9XM is offered in various memory sizes, ranging from 96 to 496-bit EPC memory, allowing for flexibility in encoding, read speed, security, cost, certification, and interoperability.

Mathieu De Backer, vice president innovation and sustainability, Avery Dennison Smartrac, said in a statement, ‘We continue to see a growing demand for small, subtle inlays and tags with high memory, particularly for pharmaceutical and healthcare applications. Combining this provision with long range readability makes the AD Minidose U9XM ideally suited to environments where product authentication and traceability are essential.’