When your animals enter study, you’ll often need to reliably and uniquely identify them. Recently, we got to see how the RapID Tag technology addresses this need. Check out RapID Lab for more information.
Cleverly, these tags combine five unique colors with a 2-D barcoded identifier.
- The colors mean you can quickly differentiate your animals visually in a cage – no scanning or animal handling needed.
- The alphanumeric identifiers provide a means of searching your Mosaic Vivarium database for specific animals.
- The 2-D barcode means you can scan the animal to unambiguously determine its identity, no matter where the animal may be.
Take a look at this view we created on the standard Mosaic Animal Worksheet:
To associate RapID Tags with animals in a cage, simply:
- Scan the Mosaic cage barcode to search for the contained animals on the Animal Worksheet.
- Make sure the worksheet is in Edit mode.
- Apply a RapID Tag.
- Click in the Code column for the appropriate animal and scan the RapID Tag using a 2-D scanner.
- When you are done with the cage, press Save.
Each animal is now permanently and reliably identified. Suppose an animal is separated from this cage and you wish to look up its details in Mosaic. Use the normal Mosaic searching techniques to find the animal with the RapID identifier. For example, you can click on the Code column header, and then use your 2-D scanner to read the animal’s RapID Tag:
When you hit enter (or your scanner may be programmed to do this automatically), the database is searched for the desired animal. With 6.7 million unique RapID values, you will not have duplicates in your Mosaic Vivarium database!
The experienced Mosaic Vivarium user will note that we’ve co-opted the Status column to indicate an “animal in experiment with a RapID Tag color.” This is accomplished by adding values to the Animal Status lookup list. When registering the RapID Tag values (as shown above), we also selected the tag color.
It would be possible to determine the RapID Tag color automatically when it is scanned. We’d be interested in hearing from our customers using RapID Tag technology with Mosaic Vivarium to learn about interest in such a capability. Use the “feedback” link in your Mosaic Vivarium account login to contact us!
Meanwhile, head over to RapID Lab to check it out.
