How can real-time asset and personnel tracking be achieved? What are the application areas of RFID technology?

1. RFID Application: Introduction to RFID

RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, is a technology that includes wireless data collection and transaction processing. Near-field (short range) and far-field (long range) are the two main application areas that use RFID technology. Tracking and tracing applications are remote or near-field applications.

2.Understanding RFID Applications

Asset tracking: Using RFID for tracking or locating static or dynamic assets such as medical facilities, wheelchairs or IV pumps, company laptops, and data center servers is not an easy task. With active RFID technology, users can immediately determine the approximate location of tagged assets anywhere within the facility. Control point detection areas located strategically throughout the facility allow users to define logical areas and monitor high traffic areas. Tagged assets moving through these control points provide real-time location data. The growth curve for asset tracking applications will show an almost vertical line in the coming years, with growth rates far higher than the general RFID market.

Personnel tracking: RFID is used in personnel tracking systems, with hospitals and prisons being the most critical places where tracking is needed. Hospitals use RFID tags to track their special patients, making it easy to track patients and other important equipment in emergency situations. It is especially useful in mental hospitals, where doctors can track patients’ every activity. Hospitals also use these RFID tags to locate and track all activities of newborn babies. The best use of personnel tracking systems will be in prisons, where it becomes a simple tracking system to monitor their inmates. Many prisons in different states such as Michigan, California, and Arizona in the US are already using RFID tracking systems to closely monitor their prisoners.

Document tracking: The availability of a large amount of data and documents has brought many challenges to document management systems. RFID is used in document tracking systems to save time and money by significantly reducing the time spent searching for lost documents and the financial and legal implications associated with lost documents.

Libraries: Many libraries use barcodes and electromagnetic strips to track various assets. RFID technology is used to read these barcodes. Unlike self-contained barcode readers, RFID-driven barcode readers can read multiple items at the same time, reducing queues and increasing the number of customers using self-checkout, which in turn reduces the number of staff required at circulation desks.

Healthcare: RFID is used in healthcare to reduce medication errors, meet new standards, personnel shortages, and reduce costs. RFID wristbands containing patient records and medication histories solve some of these problems.