RFID and EPC are bringing you safer food, easier travel and better healthcare

RFID, or radio frequency identification, is most likely a part of your life already. Do you zap your car to unlock its doors? Do you use a toll pass? Have you flown on holiday recently? Do you take prescription medicine?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then RFID may have helped improve your life. It enables you to travel smart allowing keyless access to vehicles and ensuring a speedier passage through motorway tolls. And airport staff can track luggage so that it does not get lost or delayed. RFID also ensures your health: pharmaceutical manufacturers for example use RFID to combat possible counterfeiting of their medicinal products.

Together with the Electronic Product Code (EPC), RFID enables objects to be tracked and identified more quickly. Little wonder, then, that RFID is becoming so popular. Some analysts reckon the market will be worth $7 billion in 2008, providing consumers around the world with the products they want and need and at the same time creating jobs for thousands of people.

The European Commission and the US authorities have been working together to define the benefits of RFID for the society via the “Lighthouse Project”. This report summaries the outcomes of the 2nd Symposium of this project organised in Brussels in May 2009

And there’s more: RFID helps increase the freshness, quality, availability and authenticity of food and other products. It also improves working conditions and helps to protect nature. The advantages for you: greater safety, security and convenience. Thanks to RFID, department stores can keep all sizes and colours of clothes in stock making sure that you get what you want. RFID can also speed up checkout times in supermarkets or at libraries optimising your leisure time. And hospitals use the technology to monitor the condition of blood bags and to assign courses of treatment to patients. Do you want to know more?