 | Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Issue 880 | | Will Smith, Editor |  |
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Editor's Note: Today's top story is the RFID "pill" used by researchers at Radboud University to monitor the core body temperatures of volunteers at the annual Four Days Marches of Nijmegen in The Netherlands.
RFID reader manufacturer ThingMagic has released the Astra, an integrated RFID reader/antenna for asset management solutions. Its self-contained form factor and Power over Ethernet (PoE) option were designed for ease of installation in environments like offices where antennas, cabling, and power requirements would otherwise preclude reader placement.
Private Equity HUB reports that RF Surgical Systems has raised $8.2 million from Menlo Ventures and Stanford University in a Series A round. The Bellevue, Washington-based company develops an RFID-based surgical sponge detection system and has raised $20 million in total funding to date.
Lastly, Xterprise has announced the general availability of its Clarity-ITAM asset management solution for IT assets like rack servers and storage devices. The solution can manage multiple sites and is already deployed at a number of Fortune 100 companies. |
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RFID Pill Monitors Body Temperature at Walking Race
By Brian Albright
Researchers at Radboud University in The Netherlands were able to monitor the body temperature of participants at the world's largest marching event using RFID technology. Volunteer participants in the annual Four Days Marches of Nijmegen swallowed an RFID-based temperature sensor that measured their internal temperature and helped researchers identify potential health issues.
The Marches of Nijmegen has been held annually since 1916. Although originally designed as a military exercise, the march (held in mid-July) now draws up to 40,000 people who march distances between 30 and 50 kilometers for each of the four days of the event.
The RFID study builds on the results of a previous manual study carried out in 2007, which monitored volunteers to ensure their body temperatures did not exceed recommended levels. The University began studying ways to monitor the health of marchers during the event after the deaths of two participants in 2006. That same year, 69 people were hospitalized for exhaustion or overheating.
"Based on their height, weight and age, the system was able to alert the volunteer if their core body temperature had reached a dangerous level," says Martijn Bakkers, branch manager of healthcare at Progress Software.
Radboud University developed the temperature tracking solution to help marchers avoid overheating and dehydration. Using complex event processing (CEP) technology provided by Progress Software, researchers were able to monitor and record the ten volunteers' temperatures via a signal transmitted every ten seconds from the RFID "pill" to a receiving device in the volunteer's backpack. That data was then transmitted via Bluetooth to a GPS-enabled mobile phone (provided by Dutch telecommunications operator KPN) to the operations center at Radboud.
CEP is an event processing technology that allows an application to analyze multiple streams of event data, and then react to those conditions quickly. The Progress Apama CEP platform processed and analyzed the temperature data in real time. If a volunteer's body temperature was too high, officials could alert them to either rest or rehydrate using SMS text messaging, calling them on the mobile phone, or by alerting the onsite medical team to take action if needed. Because location information was available via Google Maps, it was also possible to alert other walkers in the vicinity of the volunteer if they were in danger of dehydrating.
"The test went really well," says Bakkers. "We were able to see the volunteers' locations and body temperatures in real time. It rained during the marches this year, and we were actually able to see when their body temperatures fell or rose by as little as half a degree depending on whether they were wearing a raincoat or not."
The RFID-based temperature sensor was provided by Florida-based HQ Inc. The company's 262 kHz CorTemp sensor has been used by a number of other organizations, including the National Football League (NFL), to track the core body temperature of athletes.
According to Bakkers, the tests will be expanded at next year's event. Progress and Radboud also plan to test the solution at marathons and other long-distance running events, and hope to eventually make a solution available for other sports markets.
"We think the solution could be utilized to help prevent death or injury from heat exhaustion at these endurance events," Bakkers says.
Radboud has conducted a number of other RFID research projects, some of them controversial. Earlier this year, researchers at Radboud announced they had cracked and cloned London's Oyster travelcard and the Dutch public transportation card, both of which are based on the MIFARE Classic RFID chip from NXP (see Yet Another RFID Hack Could Affect Up To 1 Billion Cards).
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| Upcoming Events | RFID World | Sept 8-10, 2008 | MGM Grand | Las Vegas, NV
Now in its 6th year, this industry leading event is recognized as the gathering place for the builders, buyers and sellers of RFID and other Auto-ID technologies. Registration now open! Special Early Bird Savings: Save $300 off registration. Offer ends July 31st. Don't miss out! | RFID Executive Forum - Impact RFID, October 15, 2008 at UCLA
UCLA WINMEC will host its 2008 RFID Executive Forum. This Forum will bring academics, industry practitioners to discuss industry-specific modality of use of RFID and the application of RFID in their industry. For more information, please visit: www.winmec.ucla.edu/rfid/2008 | AWA PABS08 Asia Conference, Dec 4-5 - Hong Kong, China
AWA presents the Asian Product Authentication & Brand Security Conference 2008, to be held on 4 & 5 December in Hong Kong, China. PABS08 Asia focuses on the threats specific to the Asia Pacific region, various elements of IP Theft, and leading-edge solutions. Find more on the program here. | | | RFID Tags & Labels | Ferroxtag HF tags: Smart on Metal!
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