Ortho-Tag Uses RFID To Identify Your Implants

When you have a prosthetic device implanted in your body, how do you retrieve information about it? You can’t look at the bottom for a model number and you don’t want to go under the knife to find the manufacturer.

Orthopedic surgeon Lee Berger along with Marlin Mickle of the University of Pittsburgh developed a solution for this unique problem. The pair created an RFID system that will tag your implants with all the information a future physician would ever need. The tag also logs the chemical balance and temperature of surrounding tissue, so the doc can tell if an infection is brewing.

All you need is an RFID implant, a scanner to pull the data off the chip and a computer to read it. Berger is courting manufacturers of orthopedic implants and hopes one will buy into this brilliant system. [Gizmag]