Mark Swanson Hi Chris,

It looks like not too many are coming back on this question. I know RFID could be of great help to hospitals and other users, but most people here are in the medical device companies and they likely have little input on this. With the UDI regulation from the FDA, I had thought this would be more prevalent, but it seems that manufacturers aren't ready for this technology.

Chris J. Ethen, MS You're probably right Mark. Perhaps this is a better question in a biomedical technician forum where hospitals are concerned.

However, when I worked at Intel, RFID was used religiously during micro chip fabrication in order to determine which stages of production remained for each product type.

This is a very complex question. Obviously in terms a reliability Passive tags are better than active ones. Passive/Active is a common split. But within theses categories there are many other ones with many pro&cons. So to select the right techno, defining the need is key.

Michael Cambron Chris, what problem are you trying to solve? Put another way, why did you deploy RFID in the first place?

Karl Schulmeisters Passive tags have the problem that you need to have a lot of broadcasting stations to power up the tag. Hospitals tend to be high RF environments: WiFi for provider connectivity, electromechanical device emission, microwave emission, fluorescent lighting etc. Adding to this noise level with "Always On" is going to have issues.

OTOH, battery power has issues with maintenance, and costs.

RF has the advantage that it isn't "line of sight" the way IR is. OTOH RF does "floor" and "Room" hopping.

So Michaels' question is the right one: What problem are you trying to solve.

Chris J. Ethen, MS I do some consulting on the side, and was putting out some feelers to gauge industry problems and solutions. Thank you all for responding.