RFID Lends Precision to Fighter Jet Refueling

We’ve seen how RFID can be used for on-board parts tracking in the plane industry, primarily to streamline aircraft configuration, maintenance and repairs. But the military has found a way to use RFID to improve in air refueling.

When an F-16 Fighting Falcon approaches a KC-135 for fuel, the receiver aircraft is manually tracked by the Boom Operator. The information tracked for the receiver plane includes tail number and squadron and must either be visually identified or communicated by radio. During night operations and radio silence situations, this can be complicated. And when visual identification and communications are hindered, it takes longer for the KC-135 crew to accurately log the aircraft and fuel information. Adding to that complexity is manually entered information which can be inaccurate and thus costly.

The Air Force Flight Test Center constantly conducts flight tests and gathers data to maintain America's tactical dominance in the sky. Along with that, the AFFTC looks to improve the Air Force's efficiency. The KC-135 Automatic Receiver Aircraft Identification (ARAI) testing aims to do just that.

The ARAI is to be installed on KC-135 tankers to make the air-to-air refueling to a receiver plane more efficient and economical. Phase 2 testing for the ARAI began at Edwards Air Force Base, which included a flight test using an NKC-135 test tanker installed with ARAI and an F-16 Fighting Falcon equipped with RFID tags.

The NKC-135 will use its ARAI antennas to scan the F-16 to authenticate it and accurately gauge the amount of fuel transferred. The data that the ARAI retrieves is logged into a computer aboard the tanker. Accurate information is important because when an aircraft is refueled by a KC-135, the plane's squadron is responsible for the fuel cost. The Air Force is now able to budget for their fuel needs and costs more efficiently.

Millions of dollars can be lost every year because of unaccounted for fuel tracking or fuel tracking that is allocated incorrectly. When there is no communication between aircraft, it becomes necessary to estimate. The RFID-enabled process lets the boomer focus on what's important - refueling the aircraft and accomplishing the mission.

Transportation manufacturing industry relies more and more on RFID

Based upon the uses of radio frequency identification and sensing (RFIDS) we’ve explored during our 100 Uses of RFID program so far, such as asset tracking and automobile telematics, you have to wonder if RFID would have helped Neal Page get home to Chicago any faster in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.  (OK, you may not think of this, but we do since we love this space so much.)

If the car rental company that lost Neal’s reserved car in St. Louis had used RFID to track its fleet, would the car have been there, sparing him the expletive-laden tirade and allowing him to get home?  Would the car that Del Griffith successfully rented have had sensors that would have detected Del’s lit cigarette, keeping it from becoming a charred convertible?  Would the train that broke down in St. Louis been in better condition if RFID helped ensure a higher quality manufacturing process to begin with?

Of course, this classic movie wouldn’t have been as funny or successful if these scenarios played out, but we ask because these are all ways that RFID is being used by the transportation manufacturing industry.  Today, we continue the 100 Days of RFID by kicking-off a three-part series on this market.

Planes

Airplane manufacturers use RFID heavily in managing its supply chain.  Given the long, complex manufacturing time for a commercial jet, with millions of parts, Boeing and Airbus have used RFID for parts tracking and inventory control for over six years.  That use is now evolving from supply chains and assembly plans to the tracking of parts onboard the aircraft in use by airline fleets.

Boeing is using RFID tags on its new 787 Dreamliner, which will see first shipments in use by the end of this year.  The Dreamliner has tags affixed on its “maintenance-significant parts,” while Airbus’ forthcoming A350 (due in 2013) will use RFID on 1,500 of its parts for what the industry refers to as “airborne RFID.”

The use of RFID tags on these parts gives airlines the ability to track and monitor avionics and other parts after they've been installed on the aircraft. Information gleaned from the tags will support aircraft configuration management and line maintenance, repair shop optimization and life-limited parts monitoring. Consequently, the fast maintenance turnaround facilitated by RFID can translate into improved on-time performance.

Trains

In the train market, a new and very interesting application of RFID is emerging.  Bombadier, which many people know as the manufacturer of Leer jets, also is the number one manufacturer of passenger rail equipment.  Bombardier also runs a $1 billion services business that operates and maintains 8,000 rail vehicles under contract around the world, including the MBTA commuter rail service here in Boston.  To help it grow its existing business in this area, the company is developing a new set of products and services leveraging RFID.

For example, the track on which trains run, must be maintained and visually inspected for defects every 2-3 days.  For the most part, this inspection is done manually by transit workers walking along the track looking for problems, putting them in harm’s way.  As a result, it saw an opportunity for a new RFID-based system called TrackSafe. With the system, track workers wear vests containing RFID tags that automatically link to readers installed approximately every 500 feet along the track.  The readers are connected to a warning light and speaker cluster designed to activate whenever a train approached a construction or maintenance area. Train conductors, alerted to the workers' presence, would instantly know that it was time to slow down and proceed with caution, while workers would be alerted to oncoming trains.

A challenge it had when offering the system, which is not uncommon to RFID applications in general, is the objection among track workers that they would be monitored for the wrong reasons.  To overcome this challenge, Bombardier applied the concept of “sketching the user experience” created by Microsoft product visionary Bill Buxton.  This involves understanding human-computer interaction in order to design technology-driven products that are accepted and effectively used.

Automobiles

 RFID in the automobile industry has seen several applications going back to the early days of key fobs, to more recently the integration in the factory, for tracking parts containers across far-flung supply chains and for yard management in vehicle processing centers.

But getting back to our Planes, Trains & Automobiles movie reference, based upon very recent increases in the use of RFID by car rental companies, the days of Neal Page’s lost car may be coming to an end.   Thanks to two advances in RFID technologies, rental companies now can tag entire fleets and use RFID to better manage them from an inventory and security perspective. 

1. Smart labels – Low-cost RFID tags embedded in windshield stickers can be quickly and cost effectively affixed to rental cars.
2. UHF readers – The improved read range and performance of today’s UHF readers allow rental cars to be read as they are being driven off the lots, relaying the information instantly to software systems tracking the availability of vehicles.

All of this helps the rental operation streamline its inventory management, improve employee accountability and reduce labor and equipment – not to mention spare its rental agents from expletive-laden tirades from customers!

Computer Program and RFID-Enabled Toys Designed to Help Preschoolers Learn Faster

This post was sourced from Twitter with credit going to @zanderliving.  The tweet linked to a recent blog article from Trridev Labelss Mfg. Co, a provider of automation solutions and barcoding equipment, and struck a chord with me as so many kids are on their way back to school this month. 

As teachers prepare their classrooms and lesson plans, imagine the extra care taken by those who are planning for rooms full of kids with special needs.  A group of researchers are hoping to make the transition from summer fun to structured classroom a little easier for deaf children by developing an RFID-based system that combines RFID-enabled toys and a computer program to teach sign language.

The Trridev Labelss blog article is posted below:

Thanks to a computer program and RFID-enabled toys, preschoolers learn faster

A group of researchers in the United States are developing a system that uses RFID to teach sign language to very young children.

While there are a whole variety of computer-based sign language learning programs, none of them are very well adapted to the special learning needs of 3 to 5 year olds. The professors and researchers in question have created a system that combines toys and a computer to make sign language more real and more understandable for preschoolers and their parents and teachers.

RFID tags are embedded into several dozens toys, each representing an airplane, dog, cat, car, house, boat and so forth. When a child brings one of the toys up to an RFID reader situated near the computer, the computer screen automatically shows a video of a person demonstrating that item’s sign, as well as several other images of that item. The program also displays the printed word on the screen and speaks the word out loud, for the benefit of parents or educators who can hear. 

The importance of starting to learn any language, including sign language, as early as possible in childhood is very well known. By allowing educators to link actual objects that can be seen and held with their sign, RFID is helping make it easier for very young deaf children to build a solid foundation in learning.

With technology in the classroom changing so rapidly, it is heartening to see that innovation is reaching children of all learning abilities.  Now, with new clothes purchased, school lunches packed, and an early morning routine re-established - its back to school.

Feel free to share your experience with technology in the classroom below.  How else could RFID be used to help students learn and teachers teach?

Trridev Labelss cited http://www.discoverrfid.org/ as the original article source.

Low Cost, Item-Level Tagging for Package Verification, Work in Process, Product Authentication, and More

One major milestone achieved by the RFID industry over the last 10 years is its more affordable price tag.  RFID tags in particular used to cost about $5.00 each.  Now they cost pennies each.  We’ve celebrated the innovative uses of RFID in this blog, many of them made possible because deployments are easier on the budget, including lower tag cots.  Now it’s time to recognize the positive cost impact made by RFID printers/encoders.   More specifically, products from ThingMagic partner Zebra Technologies, designed for organizations with high-volume, mission-critical or specialty labeling applications.

Zebra recently announced the R110Xi4, a new high-performance RFID printer/encoder which is fully integrated with the ThingMagic Mercury5e embedded module for UHF read/write capabilities.

The R110Xi4 addresses the growing market for high-volume, item-level tagging and the recognized market shift from compliance-based tracking to more item-level tracking applications; such as retail item tagging, package verification, work in process, product authentication, document tracking and healthcare specimen tracking, to name a few.  In addition to item-level tracking, the R110Xi4 streamlines business improvement and supply-chain management applications like asset tracking and inventory management across retail, manufacturing, healthcare and distribution channels.

In the spirit of lower cost RFID tags, Zebra’s RXi4 overcomes one of the largest barriers to RFID adoption – media cost – by up to 10 percent. Here’s how.

It simplifies set up because the auto-configuration enables encoding of a variety of different RFID tags.  It also cuts cost per label, requires fewer media-roll changes and saves time with faster throughput by encoding RFID inlays that are spaced closer together (.6"/16 mm).  The RXi4 can detect the RFID inlay position within the label and automatically configure the printer/encoder without having to manually calibrate for the inlay – ensuring tag accuracy and saving time and money. If a tag is not encoded accurately, the tagged asset doesn’t “exist” in inventory or in transit and becomes lost, costing money and time.

But wait, there’s more.

Zebra’s Xi™ series printers are built for rugged durability, outstanding print quality, fast print speed, long life, and unparalleled reliability in demanding applications. How’s that for lower total cost of ownership?

Serving Up Soft Drinks, Freestyle

In this week’s posts we’ve covered a variety of topics related to the application of RFID in the beverage market, including beverage supply chain optimization, product authentication, inventory management and patron identification, but there’s more.  Coca-Cola recently began testing a new drink dispenser called Coca-Cola Freestyle™ that they hope will reinvent the market. This may be one of the most innovative uses of RFID and other technologies that the beverage market has seen in a while.

Innovation - Freestyle

If microdispensing and PurePour aren’t terms you are familiar with now, they will be soon.  These are but just a couple of the new technologies used in the Coca Cola Freestyle – a drink dispenser that also includes a curved metal enclosure created by the designers of Ferrari race cars and the latest in touch-screen menu technology. 

Using technologies similar to those used to deliver precise doses of drugs, a single Coca Cola Freestyle can dispense over 100 different beverages.  Through this microdosing process, drink ingredients are blended with water and sweetener and then dispensed from the machine.  Taking innovation a step further, the 30+ 46 ounce flavor cartridges in each Freestyle machine are RFID enabled, allowing Freestyle to detect its supply levels and transmit data back to Coca-Cola and the dispenser owner for re-stocking, and to report which brands of drinks are being consumed and when.

With 1.6 billion servings of Coke sold worldwide every day, one of the most interesting aspects of this system is the massive amount of real-time data it will be providing to Coca-Cola to help assess consumption trends and to improve test marketing activities.  For a view of what a dispenser analytics dashboard might look like, check out these images from SmartData Collective.

‘Like’ Coke?

The way that beverage manufacturers and retailers are connecting with their customers is also changing.  High-cost broadcast and print advertising is giving way to social networks and other methods of permission marketing to extend reach and deliver personalized messaging.

As mentioned in our post RFID and Social Networks, Coca-Cola and handful of companies including Facebook, recently teamed to host an event that leveraged RFID to bring the digital ‘Like’ to the physical world.  With over 500 million active users on Facebook and nearly 11 million who “Like’ Coke’s Facebook business page, a new way for brand owners like Coke to market to their customers is beginning to rapidly emerge.  Will a combination of RFID enabled displays, wristbands like those used at the Coca-Cola Village, and mobile devices help retailers, restaurants, theme parks, museums, and even brand owners, take “Like’ marketing beyond its virtual confines even further to the physical world?

Coke also has a Freestyle Facebook page that lists its test locations, drink flavors, and, of course, Wall comments from many satisfied customers.  This page also has many requests for Freestyle to be sent to "my" location - building awareness and demand from its virtual community of 'Friends'.  Described by Coke:

It's the ultimate beverage experience.

It's about choice.

It's the perfect pour.

It's 106 brands in one special place just for you.

Thirsty?

Combating Underage Drinking and Improving Sales with Patron ID and Point-of-Sale Wristbands

The days of recreating the background of a state driver’s license in your garage, taking a cheesy picture of yourself in front of it, slipping it into generic plastic enclosure, and sealing it with your mom’s iron are over.  Now I’m not saying that I ever did that, but I’m sure others tried and were successful in passing off a fake ID to go somewhere or do something they weren’t old enough to do.

Regardless of the method used to produce them, trying to enter a bar or purchase alcohol are probably some of the most common uses of fake IDs.  The debate over the legal drinking age has gone on for years.  Regardless of the position that you take, establishments that serve alcoholic beverages must comply with the law or face stiff penalties.  Making compliance difficult, some young people are willing to take the risk of using a fake ID despite the consequences - including driver’s license suspension, fines, and higher car insurance rates.  As a result, simply checking a person’s ID to provide access to a bar or an event where alcohol is being served is sometimes not enough. 

RFID Wristbands for Patron Identification

With over 50 years of experience developing wristband ID systems and nearly a decade deploying RFID systems, California based Precision Dynamics helps event organizers and venue owners take ID checking to the next level.  For positive age identification and verification, the Precision Dymamics AgeBand® system scans the magnetic stripe or 2-dimensional bar code of an individual’s credentials (typically a driver’s license or other ID card) and prints their name and other pertinent information on a non-transferable RFID-enabled wristband.  If they are 21 years of age or older, the system also prints “Age ID Verified 21” on the wristband.  In addition to confirming the age data on a person’s credentials and providing visible verification for venues that serve alcohol, use of the AgeBand system provides a technology advantage over mean looking bouncers – often scaring away those using fake IDs before they try to enter an event.

In addition to being used to verify patron ages, AgeBands are made of thermal material to support point of sale applications.  When used in conjunction with a specialized kiosk, the system allows patrons to load cash credit onto their RFID wristbands to support instant, automated purchases at concession stands and other retail areas.

If it’s a safe event environment and increased sales that you are after, you may want to check out Precision Dynamics SuperFest case study.  The write-up details how the system helped increase throughput at concession stands, reduce long lines, and allowed the venue to replace expensive stand-alone POS units – resulting in a 15% increase in revenues.

We welcome your comments below.

Beverage Dispensing – Managing the Perfect Pour

Historical records track the consumption of beer and wine back 5,000 years.  Liquor distillation began about 2,000 years ago and today, liquor is one of the world’s most traded commodities.  Central to the liquor industry are the millions of bars and restaurants that serve millions of liters of drinks each day

Key to the successful management of a bar or restaurant is being able to measure its liquor pour cost - the bar’s cost of goods sold as a percentage of total sales.  For those keeping score, if a bar of restaurant has a drink product that cost $2, and sells it for $10, then the pour cost is 20%.  In order to calculate an accurate pour cost and determine how to factor it into their overall profitability measures, restaurant and bar owners need to contend with inventory shrinkage, which is a big problem in this massive service industry.  More specifically, bar operations often lose profits due to careless draft beer pouring by bartenders (the horror - around 10-15% of tap beer goes straight down the drain in most pubs), over-pouring liquor shots, and product theft.  In fact, industry research reports that the average bar can be losing more than 25 percent of their liquor, wine and beer profits through inventory mismanagement.

Gordon's, Vodka, Kina Lillet. Add RFID. Shaken, Not Stirred.

It may seem a little like an 007 gadget from the Q Branch, but, believe it or not, RFID is being integrated into liquor pour systems to help establishments measure every milliliter of alcohol poured to customers.

LasVegas.Net Liquor Inventory System, for example, offers replacement RFID pour spouts, active antennas, and browser based software that allows bar and restaurant owners and managers to record and review drink pour data – down to the last drop.  With this system an RFID Spout is assigned to each bottle in the bar and every drink dispensed is automatically tracked in real-time.  The Liquorinventory.Net System can generate customized real-time reporting, giving bar owners a detailed view into their establishment's liquor usage to help determine open stock inventory, bartender over/under pours, employee theft, and resolve differences between reported dispensed volume and point of sale records.

Similarly, Northern California based Capton, a leading developer of RFID-based business control solutions for the hospitality market, offers a solution called Beverage Tracker.  Beverage Tracker utilize patented RFID-enabled pour spouts that monitor liquor use and wirelessly transmit information on every ounce that is free poured.  In a recently published case study, Caption details how the Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego, CA produced an immediate 3.6 point drop in liquor costs by using Beverage Tracker – an improvement that paid for the system in only 3 months.

The first cocktail party ever thrown was by Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr. of St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1917.  50 guests were invited to the Walsh mansion at noon on a Sunday for a one hour pre-lunch party.  Surely times were different and RFID-enabled pour spouts were not a topic of conversation at the Walsh house.  But the next time you are out enjoying your favorite cocktail, take a look at the pour spout of the liquor bottle at the bar.  Is RFID is helping manage the perfect pour?

[Image: LiquorInventory.Net]

RFID for Wine Production and Anti-Counterfeiting

In 1985, a bottle of Chateau Lafite, 1787 sold for $160,000 at Christie’s London – the highest price on record for a single bottle of wine.  Apparently the bottle bears Thomas Jefferson’s initials etched into the glass.  At this price, you can bet the buyer went to great lengths to make sure the bottle and the wine were the real McCoy. 

For as long as wine has been made, it has been fraudulently manipulated and counterfeited.  As far back as 1820, German chemist Friedrich Accum noted that wine was one of the commodities most at risk for being misrepresented.  Penalties for producing and distributing fraudulent or “corrupt” wine have been severe.  During the Middle Ages, if a merchant was found selling fraudulent wine, he was forced to drink all of it.  In medieval Germany, the penalty for selling fraudulent wine ranged from branding to beating to death by hanging.

Wine fraud continues, sometimes with deadly consequences for consumers.  In 1986, twenty-tree people died because a winemaker in Italy blended toxic amounts of methanol into his wine to increase its alcohol content.  The less lethal practice of illegal blending also continues, with several wine producers and shippers recently found guilty of blending inexpensive wine with their pricey counterparts to inflate production and increase profit.

Given this long and sometimes lethal history of wine fraud, it should be no surprise that the legitimate wine producers are constantly seeking ways to cambat fraudulent wine production and distribution.  Enter RFID. 

ePedigree

In 2008, eProvenance introduced a bottle seal and authentication system that uses a combination of RFID technologies to create the electronic pedigree for each bottle of wine produced.  Semi-active RFID tags are used to log temperature throughout each bottle’s journey from production to distribution and ultimately to the point of sale.  Passive RFID tags are also attached to the base of each bottle to automate inventory management and discourage theft.  Data collected from these tags enters the eProvenance Online Monitoring System (OMS), providing users with a global start-to-finish view of product authenticity.

Put a (RFID) Cork in It

Taking innovation into the bottle, Lab-Id, has patented an RFID-enabled wine cork that can be encoded with data about the wine including type of grape, bottling date, and alcohol content.  Once in the bottle, SmartCorq can be used by wine producers to improve storage and distribution processes.  Distributors and retailers can read the SmartCorq to determine specific details about each wine bottle, and consumers can be presented information about the wine’s producer and vintage through interaction with a smart retail display.

RFID Labeling

As reported earlier this year, the Tenuta dell'Ornellaia estate in Tuscany plans to implement an RFID system to track the distribution of its wines in order to prevent black market activity and guarantee of authenticity.  The solution includes RFID tags embedded into the back label of the wine bottle, with RFID read points at labeling application machines and warehouse gates.  This system records data from each bottle into a dispatch and customer data base.

Beyond fraud prevention systems, RFID is also being implemented into winemaking and compliance solutions and interactive retail kiosks (see Bacaro at the Zurich Airport).

For wine producers, implementing RFID-enabled solutions provides opportunity for process improvement across many areas of their business - from growing grapes, to making wine, to sales and marketing.  If you have a story to share on these topics or others related to the use of technology in wine production and anti-counterfeiting, please let us know below.

"May your glass be ever full. May the roof over your head be always strong. And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead." - Old Irish Toast

[photo: William Koch]

Thank You Sir! May I Have Another?

• Consumers in the U.S. purchased approximately 9.4 billion cases of carbonated soft-drinks in 2009. 
• According to Slashfood, 51.7 million cases of beer are sold in the week surrounding the Super Bowl and 63 million for Father's Day (way to go dads!).
• Market research group Mintel reported wine sales reached $27.6 billion dollars in 2009, up from $27 billion in 2008.

The production and sale of soft drinks, bottled waters, beer, wine, spirits and all other non-alcoholic and alcohol drinks makes up a $700 billion global beverage marketplace.  In order to remain competitive, brewers, vineyards, bottlers, and distributors need to continuously drive efficiencies into their businesses to create new categories, offer new brands and deliver new products to market to each year. 

Throughout this week we’ll be serving up a few examples of how RFID is being used in the beverage market to drive efficiencies and create new consumer experiences.  Some examples, like keg tracking, have been around for a while - addressing well known asset tracking and supply chain challenges.  Others are newer innovations in the areas of dispensing, sales trend and consumption analysis, and test marketing that companies are using to differentiate themselves in order to maintain a competitive edge.

RFID in the Beverage Supply Chain

For beverage companies, RFID offers a number of ways to help move products through the supply chain and keep the shelves stocked with drinks when customers are there to purchase them.  RFID solutions speed data capture throughout production cycles and eliminate manual and paper-based processes that are prone to errors and can result in distribution and fulfillment delays.

For example, in April 2009, PepsiCo's Quaker, Gatorade and Tropicana business units began using RFID-enabled pallets from Intelligent Global Pooling Systems (iGPS) in their supply chains.  RFID reading and reporting solutions from iGPS provide improved asset visibility, billing accuracy, reduced loss, and helps companies comply with industry requirements like Sarbannes-Oxley.  iGPS RFID solutions are also being used by The Sunny Delight Beverages Co., a leading producer of juice drinks including brands including SunnyD citrus punch, FruitSimple fruit smoothies, Fruit2O flavored waters, and Veryfine juice drinks. 

To improve the distribution of its products, Ringnes, a subsidiary of the Carlsberg Group and Norway's largest brewery and supplier of bottled water and carbonated drinks, is using an EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID system to track the beverage containers it ships to retailers and as they return from distributors.  Surely influenced by its view of ‘a smarter planet’, Ringnes teamed with IBM to source and deploy its RFID infrastructure. RFID Journal covered this news in a detailed case study.

Another area that RFID is being used is beer keg tracking.  Keeping this discussion away from college parties, game-day tailgating and backyard barbecues and instead, focusing on the number of kegs used and returned by bars and restaurants, it may surprise you that over fifty million of these reusable containers are lost or damaged each year.  To combat this loss, several companies have implemented RFID-enabled keg tracking solutions.  A few examples follow.

New Belgium Brewing Co. has implemented Fluensee AssetTrack™ to track the aluminum-and-steel kegs used to distribute the beers it produces at its brewery in Fort Collins, Colo.  The RFID system not only allows New Belgium to track keg location and status, but also provides key customer metrics such as fill-to-fill cycle times and distributor keg turn rates.

Scottish and Newcastle, a subsidiary of Heineken, is using the InteliTap RFID keg tracking and management system to keep track of 2.1 million kegs.  InteliTap is also working with other major brewers including Carlsberg UK and Molson Coors.

So, the next time you tip back a tall frosty beer (origins dating back to the 6th millennium BC), sip your favorite Cabernet Sauvignon (first plantings in the 18th century), fill up a fountain drink (Coca-Cola was invented in 1886), serve your kids a SunnyD (first manufactured in 1964), or contemplate what next year’s favorite flavor is going to be, share your thoughts about how technologies like RFID have impacted your beverage choices.  You’ll be the hit of the party – I promise.  Or, you can share them with us.  We’d like to hear from you.

Because it Takes More Than Courage to Beat Cancer

This week in Boston is an important one.  On Thursday, Aug. 19 and Friday, Aug. 20, local sports radio network WEEI and the New England Sports Network (NESN) are teaming up to host the 9th annual WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon.

The tradition began in 2002 when WEEI teamed up with the Boston Red Sox and the Jimmy Fund to broadcast an 18-hour radiothon to help fight cancer in children and adults.  This first event raised $325,000 in one day.  In 2003, NESN joined and the 2^nd annual event raised more than $1 million. Over the past eight years, this event has raised more than $21 million for research and care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  As in the past, this year’s 36-hour broadcast features interviews with Dana-Farber patients, doctors, researchers and nurses, and believe me, it makes for an emotional drive time.  The groups have a goal of raising $5 million during this week’s activities.

As covered in a recent ThingMagic whitepaper, hospitals have been early adopters of new technologies such as RFID to deliver the best patient care possible.  RFID helps hospitals answer the most fundamental questions of knowing who and where its patients and resources are.  With this data, hospitals can enhance a number of processes related to asset management, patient tracking and throughput, inventory control, patient-centric services, and infection control.

With RFID able to support such a wide range of healthcare applications, it is not surprise that several RFID-enabled innovations have emerged in the area of cancer treatment (see an earlier ThingMagic blog post detailing how The Disney Family Cancer Center has deployed an RFID-enabled system that enhances patient treatment experiences).  In a similar effort to create a better treatment experience for cancer patients, ThingMagic partner XECAN offers an RFID oncology solution deigned to improve the operational efficiency of hospitals. XECAN’s RFID oncology solution enables automated patient queuing, patient chart and treatment plan opening, and accessory verification for treatment devices – delivering new efficiencies in radiation therapy.

With this solution, patients are greeted as soon as they walk into the clinic and their arrivals are automatically queued in the EMR scheduler with no need for bar-code scanning - creating a personalized experience and reducing wait times. Through this integration with the hospital's EMR system, as soon as patients enter a CT Sim or radiation vault, their personal treatment charts or treatment plans are opened.  Further, the XECAN oncology solution supports the tracking and management of treatment devices such as thermoplastic masks, headrests, breast-boards, belly-boards, vac-lok cushions, custom block, and compensator trays.  XECAN’s fixed and handheld RFID readers allow hospital staff to track where these devices are located in order to provide an efficient care experience.

Casting a broad net, the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon has only two criteria for taking donations - you can donate if you know someone who has battled cancer.  Or, you can donate if you don’t know anyone who has battled cancer.  From the fundraising power of the talking heads on radio and TV to the innovations delivered by today’s technology experts, we’re moving a few steps closer to prevent, treat, and cure cancer.

What other types of patient-centric applications would you like to see made possible? Respond with your ideas here.