September 06, 2006

RFID Opportunities In Health Care and Life Sciences

IdTechEx predicts that there will be RFID opportunities [RFID Update] in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in the smart packaging of drugs. Apparently, up to 50% of patients do not use their medication as directed.

Just an educated guess, but if you wanted to invest in RFID, buy shares in a company that will be providing chips for pharmaceutical use. While the industry only has to start complying by Dec 1 for specific drugs, there's still the possibility that the FDA eventualy will expect the use of RFID to pedigree all drugs. I don't have the numbers handy, but that's a lot of bottles/ containers and thus a lot of un-reused RFID tags.

While the IDTechEx research indicates that RFID in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry will reach US$2.1 B  annually by 2016, Health Industry Insights reports that the total demand in life sciences [RFID Journal] will be nearly $15 B by 2009. This includes the sales of such items as RFID-enabled diabetes management devices.

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