Back in March, during a typical last-gasp snowstorm on the heels of winter, I attended the Smart Labels USA 2004 conference. After taking a water taxi, and dragging my suitcase through four inches of snow, I arrived at the Long Wharf Marriott in Boston. All in all, it was worth the trip. I never expected to learn so much from one conference, let alone hear about the wide spectrum of industries exploring the use of RFID as well as about those already implementing it.

The first day of the conference began with IDTechEx Ltd. chairman Peter Harrop, Ph.D., discussing the market forecasts for RFID.

"RFID is the hottest topic in smart labels right now," he said. With the push for Wal-Mart's suppliers to go RFID on their pallets, Harrop commented, "the world will be turned on its head." And, because of this push, RFIDs will have the biggest sales since they were created, and it was stated the price of RFID tagging should go down with this push.

Carl Gardner, senior functional analyst of the US Department of Defense, Automatic Identification Technology (AIT) Office, spoke on the US government recognizing the potential capabilities of passive-RFID technology. The reasoning behind the DoD's use of RFID? "If you send anything to war, we want to be able to identify it and track it," said Gardner. With more than 1,000 military sites worldwide, in over 30 countries, DoD needs RFID to control the amount of military material being delivered each year. The DoD currently uses inactive (passive) RFID for tracking and has been using it for the past 15 years. Now it's time to switch to active RFID, which it hopes will allow for faster receiving and shipping, automated inventory count, high-resolution recall of defective items, and an improved maintenance process.

James Stafford, technical executive, IPX, for retailer Marks & Spencer UK, reviewed the results of Marks & Spencer's successful test of RFID tagging on clothing in its stores. The goal was to achieve 100 percent stock accuracy in all locations in hopes of enabling the existing distribution chain to maximize efficiency. Besides carrying clothing, Marks & Spencer also retails food, and has already applied RFID tags to 3.5 million returnable food-produce delivery trays.

Marks & Spencer conducted its first RFID technology trial at item level on a selection of men's suits, shirts and ties at its High Wycombe store from October 13 to November 7 last year. The tags let Marks & Spencer check stock deliveries and to count inventory quickly in its stores and depots, Stafford said. The scanned information was then transmitted to the central stock database where an automatic comparison with the stock profile for the particular store triggered a replenishment order.

To keep the chip small and low in price, Marks & Spencer used only passive tags with limited information: size, style and color. The tags would release their unique identification number only when a Marks & Spencer product passed near a scanner, Stafford explained.

The RFID tags (the microchip and aerial) used for these garments were contained within a paper label, the Intelligent Labele, which was attached to the garment alongside a separate pricing label. The Intelligent Label was designed to be cut off and discarded following purchase.

The four-week High Wycombe trial had two purposes: to test the technology and to test levels of customer acceptability, Stafford said. The scanner technology has been developed in conjunction with Intellident, Ltd., with SAMSys Technologies, Inc., supplying the readers. EM Microelectronic, Switzerland, supplied the microchips.

The future of RFID tagging for Marks & Spencer's clothing line will consist of carrying out a much more extensive trial of item-level tagging, involving a number of stores, to establish the business case and still make money despite the additional expense of RFID tagging, stated Stafford.

CVS/pharmacy had representative, Steve Leng, director of the project management office, speak on RFID in retail pharmacy. "As a pure play healthcare retailer, we felt we needed to be influential in the industry-wide efforts to build RFID applications and solutions," said Leng. For 2002-2004, CVS dedicated itself to joining the Auto-ID Center as its first retail drug sponsor, and support the development of business cases and white papers. Besides coming on board with Auto-ID, CVS began development of its own pilot RFID application.

So why the push for pharmacy involvement in RFID? According to Leng, the FDA has recently stated that it expects RFID will be a major enabling technology in the fight against counterfeiting. According to FDA resources, "the adoption and common use of reliable track-and-trace technology is feasible by 2007, and would help secure the integrity of the drug supply chain by providing an accurate drug pedigree."

Leng spoke about the various reasons CVS found implementation of RFID to be a valuable opportunity. Among the drivers identified were a safe and secure supply chain, which would eliminate the opportunity to counterfeit drugs from the supply chain; recalls and returns would contain item-level location and date-code visibility in real-time; track and trace ability to increase confidence in stock levels and forecast replenishment more accurately; speed in script processing, which would allow for more attentiveness to customers' exact needs; an easing of regulatory operational challenges while improving accuracy and accountability; and improved inventory management—in a hypothetical retail pharmacy chain, for every $4 of inventory carried, $2 is in prescriptions.

In a startling presentation given by Walter Dizk, MD, co-director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Blood Transfusion Service, Dizk spoke on the human mistakes of blood mis-transfusion. "There are more than 20 million transfusions annually in the United States. While most individuals consider the major risk of transfusion to be exposure to viruses, data consistently show mis-transfusion—namely, administration of the blood to the wrong individual, is the leading cause of death following transfusion."

The MGH Blood Transfusion Service needed to find a solution to this unacceptable human error. Dizk's solution is to pursue the application of RFID technology to patient identification during blood transfusion. Passive-RFID tags are inserted in the wristband used for patient identification, while similar tags are incorporated into the blood-bag labels used when blood is assigned to an individual recipient. Software can be used at the final point-of-care to verify the match between patient and blood tag. A pilot version of this system is currently being tested in the operating rooms of Massachusetts General in Boston.

Beyond pharmaceuticals and retailing, RFID is being applied to many other industries to help provide a basic solution to complex problems. Delta Air Lines ran a pilot test of RFID in the Jacksonville, FL, airport to correct misplacement of baggage.

Larry Graham, global manager of manufacturing technology for General Motors stated, according to Allied Business Intelligence Inc., the automotive industry is the single largest user of RFID to date.