SmartLabels show – Boston
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Fri, Feb 20, 2009
20 Febuary 2008-- I spoke at the IDtechEx RFID SmartLabels show in Boston. This show was geared heavily toward industry folks, such as label converters and service providers. Some interesting events that took place at the show that are worth noting.
First, the Food and Drug Administration sent Anne Ferriter (MIT engineering alum) to brief the crowd on the FDA's impending requirement to track and trace medical devices with RFID. It is clear that the FDA is both serious about the pedigree and anti-counterfeit issue, yet not willing to dictate technology. She said RFID is the clearly the future but 2-D barcode is also a viable alternative for now. She also mentioned that there were tests on-going about RFID's impact on pacemakers, and so far the FDA has found no evidence of adverse effect on pacemakers from RFID - so that's good news for the industry.
Two new companies caught my eye - one had a RFID antenna production system to leverage the kernel tags from NXP and Tagsys and promised to reduce tag prices by 20% by die cutting aluminum antennas instead of copper. The other one had a thin and flexible battery that could be disposed with regular household waste. Interesting for battery assisted passive RFID tags (BAP).
There were some interesting industry perspectives - the aerospace industry continues to build significant momentum. Folks from Boeing, IATA and others were talking about greater and faster adoption. Ken Porad from Boeing was particularly excited about the fact that a 64 kilobyte RFID tag is finally reality. Juxtapose this with the hospital industry which is moving at glacial pace according to Dr In K Mun, from HCA. Clearly not only HCA, but all other hospitals take more time to evaluate RFID technology than the useable life before obsolescence. Aerospace - gaining significant competitive advantage and efficiency from agile and rapid adoption. Hospitals - showing why our healthcare system continues to be a drain on the entire nation's GDP.