Use of RFID set to grow in the health care industry

Fom Automobiles to Aviation and from Medical Industry to Shipping, the Buzz word one gets to hear is the same everywhere – RFID. With the advantages that RFID offers, it’s purely a matter of time before those small kinks viz. privacy issues, funding gets ironed out and reaches a stage of wider scale acceptance.

The Future for Healthcare:

The Healthcare Industry ,primarily thanks to the new tagging of drugs for anti-counterfeiting and real time location of staff, patients and assets for safety, security and cost control, is likely to show a growth in the use of RFID. RFID is poised to grow at a predicted 3% to 8% right across the globe stretching from USA and good part of Europe in the west to Taiwan, Japan, Korea and even tiny state of Singapore. The market for RFID tags and systems in healthcare will rise rapidly from $90 million in 2006 to $2.1 billion in 2016. Primarily, this will be because of item level tagging of drugs and Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) for staff, patients and assets to improve efficiency, safety and availability and to reduce losses.

Benefits therein:

(1) Tagging will allow us to ensure the correct medication is provided to the right patient. Errors can be expensive and some in the worst-case scenarios may even lead to death of patients. RFID with its ability to match the patient to the treatment will greatly improve that.
(2) RFID will help stop counterfeiting of drugs. This way you will have trace ability of the drug by establishing the Pedigree at all times.
(3) Use of RFID will also help address Privacy issues. Imagine a patient with a wrist tag that automatically talks to the Tablet PC with the doctor an populates his screen without you having to utter a word about your ailment history.

Conclusion:

There is no denying that Healthcare may never enjoy the biggest application of RFID ever; but its special requirements, un-quantifiable benefits and promise of better paybacks in the long run often make it seem very profitable and worthwhile business for suppliers.

Better Wardrobe Management - Thanks to RFID

Imagine hunting for a dress that you desperately want to wear for that Business dinner. As luck would have it you cant seem to remember where you put it after your last use. Is it drying on the line or has it been stacked away along with your clothes for dry cleaning or is it in a corner somewhere waiting for a wash? Tempers are going to flare up and you are worried sick you are going to be late.

Enter RFID to your Rescue! Fujitsu of Japan have developed a RFID tag that can now not only transmit and be used for identifying process but can also be washed, dried and ironed and pressed without affecting its performance. It only seems logical to have these tags attached to your clothes to assist you in quicker tracking. In the years to come surely every household will have RFID scanners located in various important places. With such tags embedded into your clothes tracking your wardrobe components will be a lot easier within the house.

At present these new RFID tags developed by Fujitsu are being used primarily at the launderers to track the sheets in a basket containing a whole pile of them. According to Midori Taniyama of Fujitsu’s RFID Systems Department, "Fujitsu will promote the system to any organization that handles a large amount of textile goods, such as hospitals, hotels, commercial laundry services or leisure facilities". These tags that close approximately a little over $1.80 is likely to come down in price once this becomes more popular in the market.

Predictably among the various uses that RFID tags are put to, this is one area where the acceptance of the technology will be complete and fastest owing to the fact that unlike other areas there isn't the fear of privacy being compromised in this case. If remote scanners are used to hack into these tags, I wonder what will be read from a distance - How sweat soaked the tag was before the wash? Now, what goes on under your clothes is surely something any deodorant manufacturers might be interested in knowing.

Introducing a RFID tag with privacy protecting features.

RFID is gaining popularity and more firms are moving towards setting up RFID technology to help better the functioning of their day-to-day activities. There is an ongoing debate questioning how secure ones private data would be on a RFID tag. The contention is that since RF readers read RFID tags, theoretically it should be possible to read the same tag from a distance. If that were true then a lot of personal data on the tag would be compromised.

Industry experts have been working overtime to com up with an answer to this privacy related issue which if not solved will greatly hamper the acceptance of this technology. Towards this end IBM has developed a prototype tag with an ability to disable its ability to broadcast item information.

The clipped Tags as they are called come with perforations like a sheet of postage stamps do. So when required the tag is torn along the perforations to rip off the antenna portion making the tag readable only from very close. The tags are planned for use at a department store to protect the privacy regarding the items bought. Typically, an item-level RFID tag stores a single Electronic Product Code (EPC). An EPC is a 96-bit identification number that indicates a manufacturer's code and product code, along with an unique serial number of an item. Using the EPC, it is possible to trace the full history of the item including where an item was shipped from, how long it sat on store shelves and price history.

To ensure a higher degree of privacy, the EPC standards body EPCglobal built a Kill command into the new Gen2 communications protocol for UHF tags. The Kill command will result in deactivating the tag permanently. While this will definitely assure a greater degree of privacy once a customer is past the till, it is going to create a huge problem when it comes to returning an item with a 30 day money back policy.

IBM has filed a patent application for the Clipped Tag but what future uses it will put it to and who all will it be licensed to remains to be seen