Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
RFID has been in use for over a decade, but until
recently, its application was limited. Today, RFID
is being used for not hundreds but thousands of
applications such as (Thornton, 2006, pp.33-35):
healthcare industry and the threats and concerns
posed by it along with their measures; the future
of RFID in healthcare is also talked about towards
the end of the chapter.
•
Supply chain including wholesale and re-
tail inventory management
BACKGROUND
•
Item-level tagging of consumer goods on
retail shelves
What is RFID?
•
Contactless payment systems at the retail
point of sale
RFID, the short for Radio Frequency Identifica-
tion is a wireless communication technology that
identifies living or non-living things. It is one of
the many automatic identification technologies
which unlike others, uses radio frequency waves
to transfer identifying information between tagged
objects and readers. Although, it was originally
designed to transmit identity information over a
RF filed, RFID technology has grown to encom-
pass a wider range of applications as mentioned
earlier in the chapter - asset tracking, supply chain
management, work process validation, secure
access control, etc. which incorporate additional
sensors and processing to allow for a wide array
of complimentary data such as location, tempera-
ture, proximity information to conveyed (Kamel
& Liang, 2009).
•
Asset tracking like luggage, medicines,
equipment, etc.
•
Pharmaceutical anti-drug counterfeiting
•
People, livestock and wildlife tagging
•
Automobile keyless start systems
•
Passport and border control
•
Toll payment system
•
Access control
•
Smart cards
•
Logistics
The healthcare industry is a substantial market
for RFID applications since healthcare facilities
today face limited resources and rising expenses.
Emerging information technologies like the RFID
technology can offer means to measure and control
the resources and workflow processes in order to
improve patient care. As every other technology,
RFID too has its pros and cons. People, that is,
organizations, developers, consumers or research-
ers are concerned about the privacy and security
threats that it puts forth. Users feel vulnerable be-
cause of the concerns (privacy/security/technical)
that exist with RFID. Measures have been found to
overcome these issues, but they are not yet strong
enough to eliminate these threats completely.
However despite these shortcomings, RFID
seems to have a welcoming future especially in
healthcare wherein several new RFID applications
are being developed repeatedly. Throughout the
chapter, the progress of RFID over the years has
been analyzed; the advantages and disadvantages
are discussed; impact of the technology on the
How it Works?
RFID system architecture consists of: a tag at-
tached to items, animals or persons; a reader that
creates an RF field to detect radio waves and a
computer network to connect the readers.
An RFID tag consists of a microchip that stores
identity information and a metal coil that acts as
an antenna to communicate the information via
radio waves. The tags can be classified based on
their energy source into active and passive. Active
tags have their own transmitter and power source
that enables them to run their microchip's circuitry
and broadcast signals to the readers. Passive tags,
on the other hand, do not have their own power
source and instead they scavenge power from the
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