The applicants have experimentally demonstrated an assembly of a UHF radio frequency identity detector tag (RFID) with a separate metal mounting saddle welded to surgical instruments can identify the instruments remotely. These RFID Pods enable entire trays of mixed surgical instruments to be counted and identified in seconds automatically. The innovation behind this application, makes is possible to scan a tray of instrument en masse .The team’s objective is to develop a smaller higher output RFID tag designed with integral mounting features (enabling secure laser welding to surgical instruments) which would be more attractive to hospitals and surgeons to deliver significant cost savings and increased patient safety .The key commercial value being it provides hospitals with an economic system to introduce complete surgical instrument tracking and validation while reducing the organisation burden and costs associated with manual instrument counting & identification. The applicants have a working prototype scanner and micro-RFID tag Pod which demonstrates the principle. However, a number of development hurdles remain to be resolved including the overall Pod size which does not fit onto smaller instruments, the loss of output signal due to signal phase shifting when applied to metal substrates and the high cost manufacturing process requires several manual stages to assemble. The proposed development would eliminate these hurdles and produce real world evidence of the successful application in a working hospital environment under controlled conditions.