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

RFID Survey Reports Lack of Man Power

The talent pool of RFID professionals is shallow and could impact the successful adoption of the technology by companies keen to comply with the expectations of major retailers, a recent industry report shows, writes Simon Pitman.

Eighty per cent of companies participating in the survey said they do not believe there are sufficient numbers of professionals skilled in RFID to hire from today - the report from the Comupting Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) finds. Two-thirds of organisations (66.7 per cent) said training and educating their employees in the technology is one of the biggest challenges they will face in order to succeed in the RFID market.

"We believe the market needs hundreds of systems integration companies with RFID capabilities; and hundreds of thousands of individuals knowledgeable in this technology to meet current and future demand," said David Sommer, vice president, electronic commerce, CompTIA.

Sommer presented the findings of the CompTIA survey in a presentation today at the RFID World 2005 conference in Dallas, Texas.

CompTIA says it is working with a cross section of major players in the RFID market to address the skills shortage. Product manufacturers, distributors, system integrators, education and training providers, and end-user customers are active in an effort to craft a vendor-neutral professional certification of RFID skills for individuals working with the technology.

The survey of CompTIA members found that customer adoption of RFID solutions is relatively modest. A significant number of companies - 71.4 per cent - said their customers have not implemented RFID solutions. For those organisations with customers that implemented RFID solutions, responding companies said that fewer than 20 per cent of their customers have done so.

Similarly, 80 per cent of the responding companies said either they have yet to go past the investigation stage of RFID implementation; or have done no investigation at all. Just 16 per cent have implemented one or more RFID pilot projects for themselves or their customers.

Survey respondents said their customers come from a variety of industries, including services, government, manufacturing, retail, health care, communications, and financial services and real estate.

When asked if they see their company offering RFID products and services in the next three years, 37.3 per cent of organisations said they definitely will; and 39.2 per cent said they would consider it if there is interest from their customers. Companies expect to offer hardware installation and maintenance services (82.1 per cent), software implementations (61.5 per cent) and other services (51.3 per cent).

The majority of respondents to the survey were value-added resellers and solutions providers (33.3 per cent); consultants and systems integrators (21.6 per cent); and manufactures (19.6 per cent). Two-thirds of the companies have annual revenues of up to $25 million; while 22 per cent are companies with annual revenues of $100 million or more.

So far companies in the US have been quickest to take up on the technology. In the manufacturing sector a lot of this movement is being driven by companies trying to comply with RFID requirements implemented by major retailers such as Wal-Mart.

This action has prompted many major players in industries such as the food and beverage industry, as well as the cosmetics and personal care industry to introduce the technology as a key part of their supply chain. Following on from this movement in the US, these companies are also starting to implement RFID systems to their operations in Europe, but at a slower pace.

Source: The Navigtor

India Adopts 865-867 MHz for RFID

Regulators in India recently designated 865-867 MHz as the country's UHF RFID spectrum, in line with the frequencies used by the United States and Europe.

In a move expected to kick-start RFID adoption among Indian companies, regulators in India recently designated UHF RFID spectrum in accordance with the frequencies used by Europe and the United States.

The Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) wing of India's Ministry of Communication assigned the 865-867 MHz UHF band for use by radio frequency identification devices. The ruling was part of a process initiated by EPCglobal India, a joint industry-government initiative that is leading the development of electronic product code to support the use of RFID.

"India has a strong export economy, so getting this spectrum was an absolute must," says Ravi Mathur, CEO of EPCglobal India, which is based in New Dehli.

Clearing the spectrum in India will enable Indian manufacturers to tag shipments of goods to meet the UHF RFID requirements of customers in Europe and the United States. Prior to the ruling, each use of the UHF spectrum for RFID required special permission from the WPC. Until now, Mathur maintains, some Indian pharmaceutical companies supplying tagged shipments to Wal-Mart have been forced to do so after the products have already arrived in in the United States, where the UHF spectrum for RFID is 902 MHz to 928 MHz. Because Wal-Mart and other retailers are requiring more of their suppliers to tag shipments of goods, Indian companies will increasingly be expected to tag their exports, as well.

Tags that comply with EPCglobal's Gen 2 standard are designed to operate between 860 MHZ to 960 MHz without degradation in performance. Thus, Indian companies will now find it much easier to encode and read tags on goods shipped, regardless of whether those goods are bound for the United States or Europe (where the UHF spectrum for RFID is is 865 MHz to 868 MHz).

Being able to use the 865-867 MHz UHF band for RFID will also be a boon to India's high-tech businesses. "The Indian software industry is in a position to be a major provider of RFID systems solutions [to the United States and Europe], but it needs to be able to test and develop RFID. In addition, chip manufacturers are also in discussions about producing RFID chips in India. With the spectrum allocated, Indian companies can work with UHF RFID without requiring special clearance," says Mathur.

EPCglobal India is also hoping to see an Indian university become one of the Auto-ID Labs—a federation of research universities that has evolved from the now-defunct Auto-ID Center and is dedicated to researching and developing new technologies and applications for revolutionizing global commerce.

India had originally considered allocating 2.4 GHz as the spectrum for UHF RFID, but EPCglobal India argued that having UHF spectrum incompatible with that used by the United States, Europe and other key markets would have seriously limited the ability of India's businesses to stay in step with RFID adoption elsewhere around the world.

"Our objective was to ensure that RFID spectrum in India would [provide] important access to the world markets," says Mathur.

EPCglobal India says its petition to the WPC faced initial opposition from both India’s military and railways, which had previously had had access to the 865-867 MHz spectrum. In its application to the authority, EPCglobal says it was supported by allocation of the UHF spectrum that had already taken place in the United States and Europe.

Source : RFID Journal