The Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced on October 11, 2005, that it has developed a system to track medical waste from its disposal at hospitals to its treatment at disposal facilities by using integrated circuit (IC) tags. It has launched this tracking project ahead of all other prefectures in Japan. An IC tag incorporating an IC chip and an antenna is attached to the item for disposal; the tag records the product's identity and other kinds of information. Information is transmitted by radio waves between the tag and the management system.

The system has been designed primarily to ensure that large-scale hospitals, which dispose of massive amounts of harmful medical waste, treat it appropriately in order to avoid the serious impacts that would ensure if the waste were dumped illegally. The system tracks the waste treatment process by reading the IC tags attached to waste containers in the possession of carriers and disposal firms. The system is managed by the Tokyo Environmental Public Service Corp..

The Tokyo Metropolitan Otsuka Hospital and the Tokyo Metropolitan Ebara Hospital started using the system on Oct. 3, followed by the Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital and the Surugadai Nihon University Hospital two weeks later. One more hospital is scheduled to join the project by the end of fiscal 2005. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to increase the number of participating hospitals in and after fiscal 2006.



Posted: 2006/02/15 12:57:15 PM
Japanese version

TAG Local government , Material reduction , System/Law