Home Podcast Scaling Medical Management by RFID with Monica Villanueva

Scaling Medical Management by RFID with Monica Villanueva

by Neal Bloom


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Monica Villanueva is a senior development engineer at Carlsbad-based IntelliGuard,an automated cloud-based medication management platform that utilizes RFID technology to facilitate pharmaceutical inventory tracking. It is the first and only known for its RFID-enabled management in the pharmaceutical industry.

From drug manufacturers to anesthesiologists, IntelliGuard helps doctors and pharmacists alike understand where the drugs have been and where they are headed. RFID is touted as being more efficient because it doesn’t need to be scanned at each destination in the same way barcodes do.  

Monica compared IntelliGuard’s technology to the chips put on racing bibs for 5K’s, noting that the RFID tag is scanned as a runner meets each milestone. In contrast, if a barcode was used, the runner would have to stop to scan the barcode at certain markers, causing a possible backlog,, lines, and big slow-downs.With barcodes, pharmacists face the same fate, as they have to take time out of their day to scan each medication. 

Monica grew up in Los Serranos, a small neighborhood in Chino Hills, Calif. This was a smaller, low income community in contrast to the greater Chino Hills area. Fortunately, the schools were well-funded and placed a large emphasis on higher education. Monica was encouraged to pursue a college degree and went on to study English Literature at University of California, Berkeley

After college, Monica went to live in Mexico City where she taught English at a private prep school. She then moved back to California, and worked at Scripps Research as an administrative assistant. She had always wanted to pursue critical analytical skills in a field that challenged her, and she found all of the above to be lacking while at Scripps. To gain career inspiration, she reached out to UCB alumni, many of whom recommended she take the Meyers-Briggs personality test. Her results indicated that she would thrive as a computer developer, so she learned coding at Coleman University.

Within eight months, she had finished her training and landed her first position as a software developer. Fast forward a few years, and she’s a software development engineer at IntelliGuard, where she works with RFID tag data and workflows. 

Since the onset of COVID-19, the team has been able to utilize the company’s technology to safely store the initial shipment of vaccines sent to Rady Children’s Hospital. Given IntelliGuard’s cloud-based data storage, the team was able to build very quickly in response to the pandemic. They did not have to deal with the infrastructure or reliance on onsite equipment, allowing them to grow despite the healthcare emergency.

Listen in to hear more about Monica’s work with IntelliGuard and how the company’s revolutionary technology is improving the way pharmacists manage their inventory. 

 

Monica’s Favorite Tacos:

Lola 55 in East Village

Connect with Monica: 

LinkedIn

Keep up with IntelliGuard:

Website

LinkedIn

Facebook: @IntelliGuardrfid

Thanks to our partners at Cox Business for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.

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