Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Thu, Jan 26, 2012
By now most of you in the RFID industry have heard about the Department of Veterans Affairs recent request for proposal (RFP) for RFID and RTLS. This $550 million RFP covers about a dozen different use cases for RFID.
The brilliance of the proposal is that it combines the best of both worlds-news significant use of passive RFID technology and is also appropriate use of active RFID technology. The two RFID technologies combined in the hospital setting will provide unprecedented patient benefit, and cost savings.
The VA is following on the footsteps of hospitals like Mayo Clinic, Disney Cancer Center, and Princeton University - hospitals which have also adopted RFID with great success. Like many other large-scale RFID deployments, either in retail or the government or even for at places like Vail resorts, there will be noise from the haters.
The bottom line is RFID is a technology that's ready for mission ciritcal use in hospitals. The savings in the healthcare arena for asset tracking, RFID specimen tracking, patient and staff tracking, plus myriad other uses are fully documented.
There is no doubt about it - RFID increases patient safety and reduces cost. But there are always going to be haters with new technology. This time it's a dying breed -the Unions.
It's a shame that the unions of the VA have to use RFID as a lightning rod to provide some perceived value. Unions membership has been rapidly declining since the 1950s as a percentage of total employment. They did their jobs wel and now are not required. People have realized union dues are nothing more than a euphemism for taxes. In addition having experienced a union myself at one job, there is little or no value in since all the original issues around fair work are now law. It was easy for me to see that unions eliminate any voice you may have had before, because if you don't agree with the union leadership your voice will never be heard. I found this out the hard way. There are a lot of VA staff that really want RFID, they think it will help them give better service, but their voice will never be heard if they are int he union because they are being surpressed.
The only staff fearful of being tracked at the VA are union representatives. The highly dedicated caregivers (most of the workers of VA) who want to provide the best possible care at the lowest possible price to our wounded warriors, have already told me that they greatly looking forward to this technology, they see the potential to help give better care, find the right equipment exactly when they need it, and come up with unique ways to ensure things are done on time
The $550 million dollar bet is one I’m willing to take – it’s technology that is in the best interest of taxpayers and the brave soldiers trying to heal.
Mayo Clinic using RFID to save lives and money.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Tue, Jan 17, 2012
This week ODIN and the NATO community reached a big milestone. The first missile with comprehensive tracking of humidity, vibration, temperature, shock and other vitals was put in transit. This health data is communicated via a proprietary RFID (radio frequency identification) system that the brilliant engineers at ODIN built and ODIN’s RFID software.
Many in the NATO community said it could not be done, the technology was impossible.
The ODIN Engineers said we have RFID software, RFID Physics expertise and the willingness to go where no other engineers have gone before. Now that missile is (as you can see from the picture) moving along America’s highways and byways bound for a ship in port someplace where that data will continue to be reported and logged in. The bottom line is that the Navy and NATO’s Navy will have higher reliability for missiles and significantly (meaning hundreds of millions of dollars) lower maintenance costs when this system gets rolled out to all the missiles in the fleet.
If RFID can track items that hold the security of our country in the balance, it can probably track your key assets. Give the brilliant engineers at ODIN a ring or an email and find out more about RFID based asset tracking for your nuclear or non-nuclear weapons, or just for your IT assets (Those are the type of jobs they can do in their sleep!) and while you’re talking to them congratulate the team on their great work for our national defenses.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Mon, Jan 02, 2012
Every year I give my top 10 predictions for the RFID industry. I'm at about a 78% historical accuracy rate -with a couple of the predictions really going either way. My bad predictions have cost me everything from a shaved head, to a nice chunk of change. However, this year I'm taking a different approach - I'm reflecting on my experience through an incredibly blessed and varied lifetime - from years in Olympic training to lessons learned through four start-ups to priceless gems from my immigrant grandmother who cleaned people's houses in Boston for a living. All influence this year's top ten list of ways you can make 2012 your best year ever on this planet.
My top ten list to make 2012 your best year on planet earth:
1. Scare yourself at least once a quarter - physically, emotionally, anything just get a real feeling of adrenaline rush when you're done.
2. Stop every day to tell someone what you are thankful for - your family, your co-workers, a stranger. No matter how bad a day is you can always find something to be thankful for.
3. Appreciate beauty everyday - in anything; the mountains, a puddle, a snowflake, an animal, etc
4. Do something 3-4 times a week to break a sweat - even if it's walking around your building a few times, or climbing stairs instead of an elevator. A sound body makes a sound mind - TJ
5. Use your God-given talents to change the world - can be in a big way or a small way but it can't be about you. Create some jobs, buy a kid a pair of skates, invent the next iPhone, stop to change someone's tire. The more it's tough on you the better it probably is, the more anonymous the better too.
6. Try a new skill once a quarter. Knitting, telemark skiing, coding FB apps, playing guitar, flying, make a nixie tube clock, anything new. Combine with #1 for a double whammy.
7. Be more honest every week - especially with your children
8. Never, ever, succumb to momentum. It's easy to not do something, or do the same something because it' always been done that way. Or to say you'll do something extraordinary when the kids get to college, or you retire. Don't wait and don't succumb to momentum; it's a guarantee of mediocrity.
9. Make a list of your goals for your life and make sure you can measure them. Working against them will make you much happier. Measuring them will let you know you've succeeded.
10. Live by the Golden Rule and Love your neighbor as you love yourself. (Full disclosure: I'm still working on this one - I've got the Irish alzheimers; I forget everything but a grudge)
If 2011 really seems to have flown by, it's probably because you are doing the same thing over and over again and you have no memories that stand out in your mind. If you do something, scary, new, exciting, challenging every month you'll have a mindful (and FB timeline full) of memories that will have you saying "what a great year 2012 was I thought the excitement was never going to end!"
Posted by Ronan Wisdom on Fri, Dec 02, 2011
One of my colleagues recently opined on this blog that Darth Vader was 'clearly' the baddest interplanetary villain out there. Beg to differ. The hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional mice encountered by Arthur Dent & crew are far more evil - anyone who can keep that front up for ten million years has my vote. Even Voldemort (I'm not afraid to write it) looked badder than Darth until he brought the wrong wand to the finale and ended up looking, well, amateurish.
Vader might have taken the title had his plan not suffered from two significant drawbacks; batteries and size. Consider how long it took to fire the Death Star's planet-crunching beam - while the Sith Lord waited patiently for countless black hat technicians to charge the
batteries, the rebels gained time. And while reliance on a battery power source made Vader's ultimate weapon much less efficient, size destroyed it. How long did it take to move the Death Star into position to destroy Yavin 4 and with it the rebel base? Had it been smaller, more nimble, it might have zipped into firing range and smartly fried the moon to a crisp well before that do-gooder Skywalker ever got close to the trench.
Batteries and size. Had Darth figured it out, it could have been a different movie.
Healthcare organizations all over the world have realized the same thing. Active RFID technology has allowed them to track certain high value assets using a variant of WiFi technology. This is a quick win with a double-height brick wall - batteries and size. Active RFID or RTLS tags are just too unwieldy and expensive to track most assets other than the largest most precious items, and while brochures might claim otherwise, you can forget about patients or staff. Likewise batteries are fine when we're looking at a few thousand RFID tags on high value assets...we can perhaps monitor and change those batteries over time, ignoring for a minute the maintenance overhead and resulting increase in TCO. But what happens if we want to track hundreds of thousands of assets, all vital to patient care?
Healthcare organizations looking beyond the quick win and towards true operational excellence have realized they must turn to passive RFID technology in order to track everything from pumps and defibrillators down to the smallest but most important of objects, such as the pieces of tissue extracted from each of us that hold the answers to our current and future wellbeing. UHF passive RFID is the only technology capable of tracking an anatomical pathology specimen, a pump, a bed or a patient, all using the smallest, cheapest of passive RFID tags - more than 100x less expensive than active alternatives - with a single lightweight infrastructure backed by international standards and many competing yet interoperable vendors.
Does this mean hospitals have to abandon active RFID or RTLS tracking technology? Not at all. The best and brightest active RFID providers (like Ekahau and Aeroscout) also understand these limitations and have partnered with ODIN to create powerful active/passive hybrid solutions. ODIN's EasyTAP is designed with exactly this Active Passive RFID integration in mind, and quickly makes passive UHF RFID tags visible to leading active RFID platforms. So while purists will argue the case for each technology, the reality is healthcare organizations can - and should have both have both.
Sadly the EasyTAP was not available a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Vader blew it. The mice win.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Tue, Nov 15, 2011
RFID is the technological equivalent of Erythropoietin or EPO. It can make even the wimpiest data capture seem superhuman. But unlike doping everyone wants to talk about it. OK, my synism for professional cycling just reared it's ugly head, I know it's a bad moral analogy but let me tell you why it makes sense from the technology perspective where RFID is perfectly legal, safe and easy to buy. But first you need to know how I got this bizarre thought.
The sun was just settling down over South Beach in Miami last weekend, a crisp breeze was fanning the 75 degrees day steadily cooler with the promise of an exciting night. It seemed like a perfect time to go for a bike ride. I needed to rent a bike. I had a dinner planned at normal Miami time- which gave me about three hours to kill that is usually referred to as happy hour. It's easy to see why.
Back to the bike rental. Like Boston, Paris, Denver and several other major metro areas, Miami has sprung for a service that rents bikes and provides pick up and drop off stations around the city. Put in your credit card, pull a bike out of the rack. You can rent for an hour, two hours or a full day. Find one of the racks around town and return the bike anywhere you feel like it.
When you return the bike it knows you are you and credits your card for returning the bike. It's magic. Or so it should appear. But it doesn't. On the side of the bike it say "RFID track able". I saw this and was immediately disappointed. Yeah I know, the guy who wrote RFID for Dummies being disappointed about RFID making its way into daily life. Yup it's true.
RFID should be the magic that brings next generation technology to our life. I spent some time with Microsoft's CIO last year and toured the home of the future - it was magic. Lots of NextGen stuff like recipes projecting onto countertops when you pulled a box of pasta out of the cabinet, music changing when you walk in the room, etc. It was largely driven by RFID. ODIN's EasyConnect social media software is doing a lot with social media - walk up to a photospot or check in at a kiosk and viola it's on your Facebook page for your friends and family to see - like magic. RFID should make magic.
If RFID is going to really have an impact it needs to be invisible. It can change the face of technology like EPO changed Floyd Landis' jersey yellow. But to have it really take off it should be . (that's a subtle joke right there)
Have you heard of BLER? How about make-before-break? I'm guessing less than .01% of the world's mobile phone users know the technology behind enabling calls to stay connected when you go from one tower to another, yet it was crucial for the mass adoption of portable phones. RFID does not need to be known to be successful. If you have a good use for RFID call it NextGen bike sharing, Magic Mirror (retailers already have that one) or Social Media Experiences. Don't call it RFID trackable.
You don't have to be Walmart to make magic. Izzy's ice cream in St Paul MN is a great example, this progressive mom and pop shop installed RFID readers in their freezers and tweet when favors of their hand made ice cream become available. They have thousands of followers, and are having trouble keeping up with demand and have won numerous awards as an innovator. That's how RFID should be used. As I put the bike back int he rack in South Beach a mile or two from where I picked it up, I thought about what flavors Izzy's had since I earned one, and checked my Twitter account and there was my favorite salted caramel appearing on a twitter feed like magic.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Thu, Nov 03, 2011
A friend of mine and I were recently arguing over who was the greatest interplanetary villain of all time. Clearly, Darth Vader is at the top of the list. But there are tons of other great villains that could vie for the top of the list.
Think about all the work that Sigourney Weaver had to do, or how much effort Arnold Schwarzenegger put in to kill their respective aliens. Arnold was lucky enough to be involved with both the Terminator and that other ugly looking thing in the jungle. I haven't even touched on the Klingons, Orin the merciless who was the Orkan that tried to blow up Fonzie. The point is there's a lot of great alien villains out there.
The same is true of RFID tags today. As RFID gets more and more mature the debate about performance in superiority becomes more and more emotional - less and less scientific. As we've seen in recent benchmark tests, the latest iterations of silicon in all top tier RFID tags are extremely high-performing. Compare the worst performing silicon today to the best performing silica just 3 years ago and the differences are remarkable.
With RFID Moore's law has clearly been outpaced.
We are at the point where RFID is a viable technology in dozens of industries from healthcare to asset tracking to retail to even social media.
When the technology becomes more about emotional argument over brand and less about empirical performance data then it’s close to becoming invisible. When technology becomes invisible it becomes ubiquitous.
RFID is finally marching down that Road to ubiquity. RFID software works accurately, RFID tag prices are half of what they were a couple years ago, and ROI is well proven.
Recent articles in everything from Wired Magazine to the MIT technology review point to the trend that RFID has made it into mainstream technology. You can bet on at least one Alien now, and for sure an Impinj, a Motorola, an NXP, an Avery, a Zebra and a few others. What's your company doing to make the most of this technology ahead of your competitors who are you picking as your winner?
Posted by P. Krishna on Mon, Oct 24, 2011
Version 2 of the international UHF RFID standard is about to be come reality. It's all about talk between tag and reader. The communication of captured tag data by the reader over to the network side is protected by secure network protocols like TLS and is not of concern. The security concerns in RFID are primarily surrounding its weakest link – i.e., the RF communications between the reader and tag, where an unauthorized party could get access to tag’s information such as EPC identifier, user memory contents and passwords.
In Gen2, the singulation negotiation between the reader and tag uses a random pseudonym (handle) which when acknowledged allows the tag to send its EPC identifier. The identifier is backscattered at a very low power by the tag, but is sent in the clear. A perpetrator can gain access to the identifier information and possibly create a clone of the tag.
In Gen 2, when the reader has to write sensitive information to the tag, such as the passwords or even sensitive user data, the write command is invoked using a random cover code generated by the tag and sent to the reader. The reader uses this code to conceal the write data sent over the high-powered link to the tag. It is possible for a perpetrator to snoop on the cover code from the tag as it sends it over to the reader and use it to intercept and intepret the reader data.
Lastly, there is no mechanism in Gen 2 for authenticating the two parties (reader or the tag) – i.e., no protection from a byzantine or unauthorized reader or tag.
Due to these security and privacy weaknesses, an unauthorized party could collect personal information, track users, steal (i.e., clone) identities or cause other privacy related issues. It may also be possible to embed malicious code into the Gen2 tags, which when read, can be inserted into end-user systems.
All this is possible despite security measures such as shielding the reader-tag communications.
Compared to first generation RFID protocols, Gen2 had made major advances with respect to security – using random cover codes for tag writes, access and kill passwords stored in locked memory regions, elimination of high-powered transmission of the EPC by the reader. However as pointed out above, the security in Gen 2 V1.2.0 is not strong enough to keep away serious perpetrators – it may be just enough to discourage casual mischief.
I should however mention that some of the fears are unfounded (e.g., malicious code in the tag infecting an end user system), but, such claims could easily damage the reputation of UHF passive RFID industry and impact its growth. And so, it needs to be addressed.
The thought leaders of UHF Passive RFID have been aware of these shortcomings and GS1/EPCGlobal standards body is working very hard to develop V2 of Gen2 protocol that addresses these concerns – specifically surrounding, security, anti-cloning, authentication, and privacy protection. I’m sure the updates will not stop at Gen 2 but also extend to LLRP and TDS. Having worked on EPCGlobal standards in the past, specifically, as editor of LLRP, I’m confident the Gen 2 working group will come up with a robust solution that addresses the security and privacy concerns in a scalable and performant way.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Mon, Oct 17, 2011
One of my heros is the late Col. John Boyd, a 20th Century Sun Tzu. A brilliant military strategists whose lessons apply perfectly to business. A tenet of his was “analysis and synthesis” AKA: destruction & creation. The idea was look at several things pull them apart to their ingredients, mix them up and put them together to make something totally new. On my flight back from the RFID Center Denmark I pulled two books apart with a great revelation! (not literally, the books were on my iPad).
The first was Ted Leonsis’ new book The Business of Happiness (which I highly recommend, not just because I knowTed but because it’s a great book) which suggests happy companies are the most successful. Google’s “don’t be evil”, Walt Disney’s “make people happy”, Vail’s “Experience of a lifetime” etc. prove his point.
Disney, Google,Vail all focus on making their clients (and hopefully their employees) happy, but they also have something else. They are driven by demand.
For years companies were all about Supply and Demand. Optimizing the supply chain was, and still is, a multi-billion dollar industry. (Think airlines, fast food, and cellular service). With a sea change in global economies a tsunami has wiped out the law of supply and demand. Winning companies now are Demand driven.
Winners are practicing mass customization; figuring out ways they can give the customer what they want, when they want it, seemingly one at a time (which makes customer happy). Car companies that used to figure out how to produce the most cars in the shortest time, are now trying to figure out how to develop new cars (responding to demand) as quickly as possible. Computer companies let you pick from a laundry list of options. Nike allows you to customize sneakers. Amazon solicits your opinion which drives market behavior. This optimization of the Demand chain reflects itself in how something meets a buyer’s need. This is where RFID comes in and can play a great role.
Coke’s latest innovation in the UK is a soft drink dispenser that has dozens of different choices. It uses RFID to track what flavor is being used, when and how much. They could even add an RFID & Facebook connection and make it viral. This is data capture to optimize demand. It could be used in myriad situations. Demand analysis is the crux of the modern day success. You can read more about Demand chains in Kash & Calhoun’s How Companies Win - but I’ll give you one example of a phenomenal company that does both and is crushing it.
Zappos.
In fact, the founder of Zappos wrote a book called Shipping Happiness (which I also highly recommend and I don’t even know the guy). The culture, methods, and strategy set the retail world on its ear. The way Zappos wanted to meet demand was so radically different they had to start and run their own logistics operation instead outsourcing to a perennial leader like FedEx.
Zappos focused on the demand chain, and they were a happy company. Employees got new challenges regularly, continual training, a chance to do meaningful work, benefit financially and change an entire industry. They were happy, their clients were really happy and the company was years ahead of competitors.
Take happiness, take client demand and pull them apart to find out what items drive them in your company. Then mash them back together to focus on happiness combined with optimizing your Demand Chain and you’ll have a massive hit on your hands - I’m already betting on that.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Fri, Oct 07, 2011
So long Steve Jobs. Thanks for the innovation and economic stimulation. We'll try not to let you down, we'll do our best to take some lessons from your life to build great companies and maybe even help our ailing country.
I know you'd want to make sure that Americans realize the key to the US being great again isn't digging holes and filling them in with new pavement. Growth will come from the in
novation and investment in technology. The iPod, iPhone, iPad and the Macs have brought billions of dollars of revenue, jobs and growth to the United States. Yes, they are assembled in China, but that's OK because 80% of the revenue and profits stay here in the USA with the skilled labor that makes the chips, designs the system and writes the code. The coolest part is that the majority of AAPL revenue comes from outside the US (in Q1 2011 the $23 billion in revenue included only $9.2 billion was from the Americas) - that means a lot of other countries are sending us money.
Are these four lessons enough to save us? Yes, I know only if we all buy in. I get that, let's at least try:
Lesson#1 - invest in technology and technology training. People around the world will send money to US companies if they make great products, but we need stimulus to help catalyze the current generation of entrepreneurs in their parent's garage.
Antonym - do the same thing we did 80 years ago. No one in Germany, or Japan is sending money for the road that was rebuilt from the traffic circle to Sankaty in Nantucket, and the guys who built it? Collecting unemployment again.
Lesson #2 - you don't have to be first, you just have to be the best. MP3 players were around for years, but my Mom never used one. The iPod changed that. Same with phones, laptops and tablets none invented by Apple. All perfected by you. Let's take great ideas from around the world and make them better.
Antonym - "this is how we have always done it". Someone should be able to sue a major corporation because the coffee was hot and they burnt their tongue.
Lesson #3 - work harder than everyone else, take accountability, have passion and discipline. Apple engineers would at times work 48 hours straight, stay at the office over Christmas, just to be the first to market, or to make sure the product was the most amazing it could be. That dedication is born from passion and pride.
Antonym - let's get fat, sit around watching mindless television shows, complain about work life balance and expect someone else to solve the tough problems for us. Then bitch when they don't.
Lesson #4 - Make a dent in the Universe. Do great things that will change the world. Think really big. Attack tough problems - from energy and communication, to tort reform and terrorism. we need to solve big issues as a unified force that makes the US collective so powerful.
Antonym - do just enough to keep the status quo and try to amass as much political power as possible for personal gain.
Steve, we will do our best to apply these lessons. We'll try to stay hungry and stay foolish.
Written on my iPad.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Mon, Oct 03, 2011
Since ODIN’s humble beginning almost a decade ago we have worked for every brach of the US department of Defense and most Civilian agencies creating passive RFID solutions that increase efficiency, speed up audit or inventory functions and provide true asset visibility. That led us to develop some unique asset tracking solutions.
One of the things people remark about, and it just happened on a tour yesterday, is the clandestine RFID readers we have deployed at ODIN’s HQ in Ashburn, VA. We’re able to track laptops, binders, weapons and myriad other assets moving in and out of rooms with both custom ODIN Hawk Wings and off-the shelf antennas like Impinj’s small form factor.
The benefit of installing RFID asset tracking systems in walls and ceilings is both aesthetic and security. An office or data center should not look like a Wal-Mart warehouse, it should look like a “Class A office” that most of our clients have. Visible portals and RFID readers are untenable. Secondarily, some forms of security should be out of site, so people don’t readily think of ways to defeat the system.
At the end of the day, most of our RFID Asset Tracking Solutions are there so someone can have the “Big Red Button” - push a button and get an inventory report of location and assets with 99% accuracy at any time. This saves millions for big banks and government agencies. But it only takes one instance of attempted theft to be thankful an RFID asset tracking system is there for security and your CIO’s picture doesn’t make it on the front page of the New York Times. That might be worth a promotion to the smart guy who deployed 21st century technology to track key assets!
