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RFID developments through Monday, July 26th:
1. Drugmakers 'Jumpstart' RFID Tagging Of Bottles
2. Parents track kids using chip technology
3. Portuguese pooches to get radio-tagged
4. The time is now for RFID watches
5. China to develop its own RFID standard
6. RFID Upgrade Gets Goods to Iraq
7. RFID for Hospital Care
Drugmakers 'Jumpstart' RFID Tagging Of Bottles
Between 2 and 7 per cent of all drugs sold worldwide are counterfeited, costing the pharmaceutical industry $30 billion dollars every year. Add to this already staggering sum the $40 billion cost of theft and lost inventory, and it's no wonder the pharmaceutical industry has started an item-level RFID tagging trial, tracking bottles of drugs from the point of manufacture all the way to pharmacies' shelves.
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Parents track kids using chip technology
Theme park child-tracking is quickly gaining traction as a consumer-facing niche in RFID. The Great America park in California and Denmark's Legoland have both recently rolled out systems in which children and family members wear RFID-tagged bracelets during their day at the park. Should a child become lost or separated, RFID readers around the park ping the child's tag, effectively locating the child. Of course, such an RFID application raises serious questions of privacy and monitoring.
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Portuguese pooches to get radio-tagged
U.S.-based Digital Angel has won a $600,000 contract from the Portuguese government to RFID-tag up to 200,000 dogs. The contract represents the first phase of a wider initiative to control rabies by tagging and cataloging the country's roughly 2 million dogs by 2007.
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The time is now for RFID watches
A Swiss startup named WinWatch will use RFID to help watch manufacturers prevent counterfeiting. By implanting tiny Toshiba-developed RFID chips in the glass crystal faces of the watches, authenticity can be assured and verified later in the marketplace.
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China to develop its own RFID standard
In an effort to avoid paying non-Chinese companies potential intellectual property royalties and to benefit its own radio frequency identification industry, China will develop a proprietary RFID standard. The standard is expected to be compatible with the international one.
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RFID Upgrade Gets Goods to Iraq
RFID technology has been implemented at a distribution center in Kuwait that serves U.S. troops in Iraq. A solution was badly needed at the disorganized center - considered a "blackhole" - where shipments were often identified and repackaged manually. Upon implementing the RFID solution, the flow of goods was significantly accelerated, alleviating the bottleneck and allowing for better tracking of the shipments from Kuwait to their destination in Iraq.
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RFID for Hospital Care
Siemens and New York-based Jacobi Medical Center have teamed to offer an innovative RFID healthcare solution. Patients wear RFID-enabled identification wristbands while medical workers carry handheld Tablet PCs loaded with RFID readers. When a reader enters a tag's range, the patient's identification is read and her medical information downloaded wirelessly from a central database to the doctor's handheld PC. The doctor thus has immediate access to patient data, saving time and enhancing the patient-doctor relationship.
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