RFID diffusion into Pharmaceutical industry

Filed in archive Technology on November 28, 2006

The pharmaceutical industry will be an important determinant in the widespread adoption of RFID. According to RFID Journal, the RFID industry will take care of item level tracking as well as high compliance applications on a global level. The use of RFID in the pharmaceutical industry will not only set the specification of using RFID for tracking within high volume global supply chain but will also help in the commercial deployments in other high growth markets like retail, health care and consumer packaged goods.

But RFID Times pinpointed a nice aspects today about this:

If we look at the larger picture there are a lot of hurdles that need to be crossed. The major hurdle in the adoption of the technology is price. The initial as well as continued software, hardware and services cost are high. The cost of ownership, the costs related with anti counterfeiting, customized transponder form factor and enhanced encryption subsequently add to the cost.

Another concern of debate is the frequency. There are discussions on homogeneous versus heterogeneous frequency environments in the pharmaceutical supply chain. There is no consensus regarding the kind of tag to be used either UHF or HF. It is felt that HF be used at the item level and UHF at the case and pallet level or the use of UHF at the case and item level.