Marry off RFID and Barcode technologies, says Frost and Sullivan report

Filed in archive Report on August 24, 2007

Frost and Sullivan has recently come up with a report titled Advances in RFID for Healthcare Applications which talks about advancements in the healthcare industry with respect to RFID technology but states that costs have been a prohibiting factor in its growth.

Sachin Thukral, research analyst, Frost and Sullivan stated:

Even as RFID matures, it is likely that bar coding will continue to offer hospitals a proven, efficient and more cost-effective means of capturing data for a variety of applications. Some of the applications are bedside medication administration, unit-dose labeling in the pharmacy, specimen collection at the patient bedside, specimen tracking and management in the laboratory, materials management and more.

Most of the people feel that RFID is a new technology but you would be amazed to know that RFID has existed for more than five decades and was first implemented in the Second World War for identification of friendly airplanes If we talk about the costs of RFID then they have certainly dropped in the last ten years since a credit card tag which used to sell for $65 in the nineties is now available for around $2 and in case you buy it in bulk then you can get a further cheaper deal.

It is being said that RFID will completely replace barcode but I don't agree on this issue and feel that they will co-exist and their combination will turn out to be a potent formula. Even this particular report states that rather than replacing each other these two technologies need to be married off so that they can coexist and offer a favorable return on investment.