RI Witness and Your Patients

Patient Reassurance

How might my patients feel about the use of an electronic witnessing system?
Patients can be reassured throughout their time at a clinic through accessible literature, up-to-date technology and a record of their cycle including images and videos captured from every microscope used.

Additionally, prior to transfer they can be shown their embryo, linked to their patient ID, demonstrating how seriously a clinic takes their security.

One study found that patients and embryology teams felt reassured when using RI Witness, and that it could be used as a trusted strategy to decrease patient stress concerning mismatches; 97.1% of patients confirmed they were more reassured if an Electronic Witnessing System was used in their clinic8.

Explaining RI Witness to your Patients

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Key Product Information

Brochures

Specifications

Order Codes

The Patient Experience Using RI Witness

RI Witness Protecting Embryologists and Patients

STAND TALK: Glenn Proctor, Embryology, Andrology and Endocrine Manager at Conceptions Reproductive Associates of Colorado

Education Film To Aid Patient Understanding of RI Witness

Dr Steve Mansell, PhD, Embryologist at Medicus, Norway

Product Specifications

Work Areas One work area required for each critical working location. Microsoft Windows based PC or Tablet needed for each work area. Readers available heated or unheated. RFID reader frequency: 13.56MHz
Barcode Compatibility (Traceability) Compatible with GS1 barcodes (GS1-128)
Barcode Scanner (Traceability) Compatible with USB (Keyboard wedge) fixed and hand held scanners
Camera Compatibility (Imaging) Research Instruments’ DC1 & DC2, Analogue cameras
RI Witness™ Manager (Client Software) PC System Requirements Operating Systems: Windows 11, Windows 10
Server / Network Requirements Microsoft SQL Server required (not supplied). Network Point required for each work area

Order Codes

The Order Codes for RI Witness™ will depend on your particular configuration.

 Please contact a distributor in your region

Brochures

1.  Thornhill A, Orriols Brunetti X, Bird S, (2013). Measuring human error in the IVF laboratory using an electronic witnessing system. 17th World Congress on Controversies in Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Infertility, Lisbon. 1 Thornhill A, Orriols Brunetti X, Bird S, (2013). Measuring human error in the IVF laboratory using an electronic witnessing system. 17th World Congress on Controversies in Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Infertility, Lisbon.

2. Townsend N, Ah-Moye M, Bunyan K, Engley S, Evans D, Glover L, McClure A, Ogutu D, Richardson L, (2016). Can electronic witnessing with RFID tags safeguard patients and mitigate risk in an IVF laboratory?

3. Sanges F, Maggiulli R, Albricci L, Romano S, Scarica C, Schimberni M, Giallonardo A, Vattraino G, Ubaldi F, Rienzi L, (2013). Implementing an electronic witnessing system into a busy IVF clinic- one clinic’s experience.

4. Patel B, Schnauffer K, Gregoire, Kingsland CR, Troup S, (2013). An investigation into the efficiency of RFID electronic witnessing compared to manual witnessing.

5. Department of Health (2004). Independent review of the circumstances surrounding four adverse events that occurred in the Reproductive Medicine Units at The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. [online] London. Available at: http://www.who.int/patientsafety/information_centre/reports/Independent_review_Leeds.pdf [Accessed 12 May 2017].

6. Research Instruments Ltd. (2005). Test Report on Mouse testing of RFID Tagging System “IVF Witness”. Certificate of Analysis (Ectors, FJ, August 2005, GIGA Université de Liège,Belgium) Certificate of Calibration (Wragge-Morley, B. ETC, UK, May 2005) Certificate of Analysis (Pearce, J, May 2007, Embryotech, Wilmington USA)

7. Obradors, A. (2016). How can we mitigate the risk of error in the IVF Lab?

8. Forte, M., Faustini, F., Maggiulli, R., Scarica, C., Romano, S., Ottolini, C., Farcomeni, A., Palagiano, A., Capalbo, A., Ubaldi, F. and Rienzi, L. (2016). Electronic witness system in IVF – patients perspective. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, 33(9), pp.1215-1222.

9. Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels. (2020). IVF Witness in 2019, Internal Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels presentation: Unpublished.

10. Mental health in the workplace. (2017). World Health Organization. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/mental_health/in_the_workplace/en/.

11. Cooke, S. Low-risk laboratory management. In: Organization and Management of IVF Units: A Practical Guide for the Clinician. Eds: SD Fleming & AC Varghese. New York. Springer. 2016; Chapter 7: pp115-152.3. World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/mental_health/in_the_workplace/en/

12. CooperSurgical. (2020). Nurture Fertility Report Increased Productivity Following the Introduction of RI Witness™. 

RI Witness™ Publications

Measuring human error in the IVF laboratory using an electronic witnessing system

Implementing an electronic witnessing system into a busy IVF clinic – one clinic’s experience.

Electronic Witness System makes patients less concerned about biological sample mix-up errors and comfortable with IVF clinical practice

Infallible processes in reproduction: Efficiency of preventative RFID systems and quality controls in an ART centre.

2017 ESHRE presentation – An 8 year snapshot of insightful data using RI Witness: an absolute necessity for your IVF laboratory – Dr Stephen Troup Scientific Director, IVI UK

Q: What is RFID? 
A. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify objects. Labels with tiny microchips embedded in them are attached to all plasticware such culture dishes, test tubes and patient identity cards before being assigned to a patient. These microchips are read by the RI Witness readers. There is no need to directly scan the labels, the whole process is automatic and many tags can be read simultaneously.

Q: How does the RFID label transmit the information? 
A: RI Witness uses RFID tags and a reader. The reader sends out electromagnetic waves and the tag receives these waves. The RFID tag draws power from the field created by the reader and uses it to power the microchip’s circuits. The microchip then modulates the waves that the tag sends back to the reader and the reader converts the new waves into digital data.

Q: Are there any health risks associated with RFID and radio waves?
A: RI Witness uses a radio frequency similar to the signals received by your car radio. We have organised exhaustive independent Mouse Embryo Assay (MEA) studies to demonstrate that RI Witness RFID does not have any detrimental effect on the development of embryos. These tests used radio waves which are 700 times stronger than those used by the actual product.

Q: Why is RFID better than using barcodes? 
A: The most significant difference is that barcodes use line-of-sight technology. That is, a scanner has to “see” the barcode to read it, which means it is necessary to orientate the barcode towards a scanner for it to be read. Barcode systems therefore rely on the user remembering to confirm patients’ sperm, oocytes and embryos match. This can be prone to human error, and if not done correctly, can give a false record.

RFID, by contrast, doesn’t require line-of-sight. Tags can be read as long as they are within range of a reader. In addition, multiple RFID tags can be read at the same time, meaning that several items can be identified together. RI Witness uses this ability to automatically check everything that is brought into the working area.

RFID technology provides a level of security that can eliminate human identification errors. It monitors everything in every work area, every second of every day. It also offers an extremely large number of unique identities (UID). This means that each sample container can has its own UID and that procedures can be tracked in detail. The system knows exactly what has happened to the samples and which containers were used. The communication between tag and reader is very secure.