Monday, June 4, 2007

Tagging patients by radio transmitters...

BANGALORE: When patients are admitted to the Out Patient Department of the Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain (BMJ) Heart Centre here, they are provided a special card fitted with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip.




HEART AND BRAIN: The cardiac laboratory at the BMJ Heart Centre in Bangalore (left) is linked to the Clinical Information Processing Platform developed by Aventyn.

This helps the hospital keep track of the patient, via radio, as they move from reception to consultation and treatment rooms. The record of tests conducted, medicines prescribed, bills raised... are all available wirelessly in an instant at any of over a dozen stations, helping the hospital treat the patient, speedily and with minimum hassle.

The RFID technology — the use of tiny embedded radio transmitters to track people and objects — forms the communication backbone of the Clinical Information Processing Platform (CLIP) deployed at BMJ, a state-of-the-art hospital management system that has been developed by an Indian-founded, U.S.-based company, Aventyn.

The latest — version 1.2 — of CLIP, is one of the first of its kind in the healthcare industry, providing clinicians, health care providers and hospital administrators, with a single but comprehensive tool that links up "live" with the key element of any such operation: the patient.

The RFID is increasingly being harnessed to keep track of large inventories in warehouses and depots — but new and creative applications are enlarging its scope.

At BMJ for example, they tag not just patients but high value inventory such as pacemakers and stents as well.

In a special report on the CLIP deployment at the Bangalore hospital, Beth Bacheldor wrote in RFID Journal last week that over 100 patients were being tagged daily.

Satish Chandra, Director of non-invasive cardiology, is quoted as saying that the hospital's experience has encouraged it to extend the system to inpatient and intensive care departments.

The San Diego-based Aventyn was founded by Navin Govind, who has contributed key wireless technologies earlier at Intel and Tarari Inc.

In recent weeks, the CLIP solution has been widely discussed by RFID forums worldwide — and the experience in Bangalore will be closely watched by other potential user agencies worldwide.

Source : Hinduonnet

Friday, June 1, 2007

Report studies chipless RFID market potential

Research and Markets has announced the recent publication of a report entitled 'Printed and Chipless RFID Forecasts, Technologies & Players 2007-2017', which shows how chipless RFID smart labels - which can cost much less than chip-based RFID tags - could grow from 0.4% of the RFID market in 2006 to as much as 45% of the market by 2016.

With cumulative sales of 100 million chipless tags to date (compared to 2,322 million chip-based RFID tags), chipless devices have the potential to grow to 45% of the market in 2016, the report says. Ultimately, the end aim will be for RFID to be almost costless, in the same way that barcodes are today. reaswaran This article is copyright 2007 UsingRFID.com.

Big players grow the market

Some of the biggest names in the business now offer both chip and Chipless RFID in order to cover a full range of user needs. From AstraZeneca to Calvin Klein, companies are already using them in large volumes and many paper and packaging companies have licensed the various processes.

Chipless RFID tags can operate to over 10 meters in range and with 256 bits of data, and can cost as little as one-tenth of their silicon chip equivalents. Chipless RFID can be materials-based, or can consist of transistorless circuits. Transparent polymer transistor circuits are now also available from Philips, PolyIC, OrganicID and Motorola among others. These directly mimic the circuit on a chip.

The chipless future

These factors, the report says, mean that chipless technology is addressing mainstream RFID applications and is likely to grow the market rapidly through massive price reductions.

The report on chipless RFID contains detailed market forecasts from 2006 to 2016, an analysis of the technologies being implemented today, and several detailed case histories and company profiles of the various trials and successes in the industry. The authors also offer their assessment of who will be the winners and losers in the market, and what the future will bring.

Source: Using RFID.com