Medical Asset Management (MAM), track and tracing of medical instruments throughout a hospital, is very comprehensive and complicated. To implement such a system on individual instrument level, a technique that can create Unique Device Identification (UDI) codes is needed. Current UDI systems, such as RFID and barcode scanning, do not suffice. Adding a RFID tag to a large instrument is not a problem, but adding the tag to a small scissor can be problematic. Adding a barcode to an instrument can be done in multiple differ- ent ways such as; laser engraving, adding a sticker or adding a tag with a barcode on it. The tags tend to be removed by medical professionals and stickers can get loose. Laser engraving seems to be a good alternative, if no human material would stay behind in the slots after sterilizing.
Both techniques discussed above are not specific designed for Medical Asset Management. The goal of this thesis is to research if a different technique can be used for MAM; medical instruments identification via lu- minescent micro-particles coating. The main question is:
Is it possible to coat individual medical instruments with a coating via electroless nickel plating, with embed- ded luminescent micro-particles and identify these instruments?
To answer this question, this thesis is divided into 4 parts; Electroless nickel plating of stainless steel; Physic- ochemical characterization of the coatings; Identification of the substrates and Implementation. During the 8 experiments, 316L medical grade stainless steel substrates are coated and characterized. The identification part consists out of building a setup for a UV-C light and creating a Matlab file for automatically identification of the substrates. Medical instrument experts are consulted for the implementation part.
With the use of a nickel strike as a pre-treatment, a successful coating was embedded into the substrates. The Barium Magnesium Aluminate (BAM:Eu) particles were visible via the SEM analysis and was identified via a EDS analysis. Exciting the substrate with the UV-C light resulted in a clear blue substrate. Trying the same experiments with different particles, Yttrium-Oxide (YO:Eu), was not successful. The dispersion of the YO:Eu particles was different in comparison to the BAM:Eu particles. The YO:Eu particles eventually sank to the bottom or agglomerated on the top of the solution. The created Matlab script was successful in identifying both colors. During the discussion of the technique with medical instruments experts, questions arose about the change in material properties. Some properties do change, but the impact of this needs to be further researched.
This research proved the concept of identifying individual medical instruments via a luminescent micro par- ticle coating. It is possible to coat and identify a substrate with this technique.