1. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to systems and methods for inventory management, and, in particular, relates to tracking the inventory of items in containers.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is well known in the medical community, and in particular, in hospitals, to store medications and other medical supplies in a centralized area or station for dispensing and administering the medications or supplies to patients. These stations often require user interaction to track quantity of each medication that is stored in, added to, or removed from the station.
For example, many stations require a user to gain access to the medications in the station and manually press a button for each and every medication taken from the station, even though the user has access to and may remove many medications from the station at once. In practice, users are not always compliant in pressing the button for each removal of medication, often due to forgetfulness. Such manual button pressing requires continuous monitoring and messaging to enforce and maintain a high level of compliance by users.
As another example, other types of stations rely on radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on medications and an RFID tracking device in the station to track the quantity of the medications in the station. In such stations, the RFID tracking device is able to track the movement (e.g., removal or addition) of medications based on their individual RFID tags. The management of such stations is complex. Each medication must be tagged with an RFID tag, and each RFID tag must be programmed correctly and validated. This process, including the cost of RFID tags, is relatively expensive, and as such RFID tracking technology is often only used on high cost medications. Consequently, low cost medications, which often are a majority of the items stored in stations, remain untracked.