Investigation of Two Prototypes of Novel Noncontact Technologies for Automated Real-Time Capture of Incremental Drug Administration Data From Syringes.

Background: An ideal electronic anesthesia recording system would be capable of not only recording physiological data but also injectable drug doses given, including those given incrementally from one syringe, without recourse to manual data entry. We compared 2 prototype devices which wirelessly recognized individual syringes and measured changes in their plunger positions via 2 different optical noncontact means, allowing calculation of incremental drug doses given.

Methods: Both devices incorporated a radio-frequency identification reader, which wirelessly read a unique code from a radio-frequency identification tag within syringe drug labels.