原创 New born babies are RFID tracked for safety

The use of RFID tracking in retail and asset tracking has been well debated for a long time now. I have long had the image of seeing all products on the shelves of supermarkets having RFID tags, and in true ‘Big Brother’ style, the supermarket will know when and which products have moved from their shelves and who has purchased them. We are not far away from that with reports of Walmart’s roll out in the USA of several billion units of passive RFID tags as well as thousands of readers.

According to forecasts announced by ABI Research this month (September 2010), the value of the overall RFID market – from traditional applications such as access control, electronic toll collection and e-ID/ID documents, to newer applications such as animal ID, asset management, baggage handling, cargo tracking/security, contactless payment and ticketing, and supply chain management – will pass the US $6 billion mark next year.

Their practice director Michael Liard sums up the overall market situation as generally optimistic despite last year's economic woes, and growing more so. He said, "In response to the weakened economy, most RFID and RTLS value chain participants reported reductions to marketing expenditure, staff, and on-hand inventory levels beginning in late 2008 and continuing throughout 2009."

However, as the end of 2009 approached, ABI Research's conversations with vendors and solutions providers grew more positive – the market was growing, orders were being placed and user interest was picking up across industries. "Overall 2009 continued the forward momentum for both RFID solution providers and the user community," says Liard. "That trend continues in 2010." The latest research indicates CAGRs of between 21.7% and 28.8% for the five primary applications over the period 2010-2014.

Healthcare – RFID keeping babies and parents safely matched

An announcement this week sees the real-life application of RFID technology to healthcare. UK-based company identySOL, which also has offices in Mumbai, India, has been selected to integrate a solution which will be deployed to secure new born babies in a hospital. Babies and their guardians will be tracked in real time – the solution will ensure that babies are in their allocated zones, and real time alerts will ensure babies are safe at all times. It will be fully integrated with the hospital management system (SAP) to ensure seamless operation with minimal overheads.

identySOL is working in partnership with SecuriCode UK (a manufacturer of active RFID hardware) to implement this. Other applications include tracking of people with dementia, memory loss or other disabilities.

This type of solution can also be used in other sectors such as finance and IT to secure valuable assets such as laptops and storage devices. The unique tamper detect technology from SecuriCode coupled with highly scaleable software from identySOL ensures assets or people are monitored reliably.

Other healthcare RFID solutions from identySOL include smartcards used to store digital information, in cases where patient data such as allergies, blood group and so on, need to be stored securely. For more information, visit the identySOL web site.