RFID Exotica — A Ubiquitous Enabling Technology
RFID is about security
Most of the government backed RFID is about security but what made a Swedish company largest in RFID today? It was secure access, with Assa Abloy enjoying something in the region of $300 million in sales from its ten carefully chosen RFID acquisitions in or near this sector.
RFID is about error prevention
Those thinking of RFID for replacing barcodes and at least civil supply chains are boxing themselves into a corner. The biggest RFID application in Healthcare is the 40 million tags delivered for error prevention on AstraZeneca anaesthetic Diprivan used in operating theaters. The many drug trials that have RFID-enabled, compliance-monitoring blisterpacks this year are concerned with error prevention. The TREAD Act in the US is expected to drive RFID into every car tyre for error prevention. The largest milk cooperative in the world, Fonterra of New Zealand, has ordered over 500,000 tags for milk samples and preventing mistakes with pipe connections and, in a way, the tagging of over ten million test tubes used for blood samples and drug development (potential several billion yearly) is associated with automated recordkeeping because humans make errors. Indeed, the tagging of mothers and new born babies in German, US and other hospitals is concerned with preventing mother baby mismatches which have reached 20,000 yearly in the US alone. That is just the reported ones. Beyond error prevention, there is anti-counterfeiting of drugs, designer goods and cigarettes and more that is being progressed ahead of conventional track and trace. It has potential of 150 billion yearly just for those three types of product. Is that really a niche market?
