Feb. 25, 2008—RFID in Health Care 2008, RFID Journal's first annual conference and exhibition for health-care professionals, was held at The Westin Casuarina in Las Vegas, on Jan. 23. A total of 175 attendees gathered at the inaugural event, and speaker presentations are now available on the event Web site (see final page for downloading instructions).

This conference, colocated with World Congress' Healthcare Supply Chain Management Summit, was designed to provide education about how hospitals across North America are achieving benefits from using RFID technologies to monitor patients and assets, as well as automatically collect information and reduce medical errors. Such benefits include improving patient outcomes and attaining a financial return on investment.

During this one-day event, end users—including hospitals, government agencies and health-care providers—revealed how they have employed RFID and Electronic Product Code (EPC) technologies to cut costs, streamline operational efficiencies and improve patient care. What's more, industry leaders offered insights into how to move from one-off applications to an infrastructure approach to radio frequency identification.

Harold Boeck, a professor of marketing and academic founder of Academia RFID, a Montreal-based training, research development and consulting center, provided a foundational overview of the basics of RFID and EPC technologies for health-care professionals. Boeck explained the differences between various classes of tags, both active and passive, and highlighted the need for additional IT systems to build upon RFID in real-world applications. He also explored the EPCglobal network, standards established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and major applications of RFID technology. In January of this year, Academia RFID announced an RFID certification program for operation managers, engineers, directors, RFID consultants, IT directors and system integrators, focused on business-problem solving, process reengineering, implementation and scalability (see RFID News Roundup: Academia RFID Launches New Certification Program).