RFID Journal Staff asked 15 years ago Dear RFID Journal:
We want to implement RFID technology in our hospital. The idea is that when a patient comes in, she (or he) will swipe her ID card near the RFID reader to instantly call up all information about that patient in our database—name, photo, medical history, etc.—on the computer screen, so she can be treated by a doctor.
We are on a Linux platform, and we want to integrate this RFID system on thin clients, or maybe on the network. We are running a thin client environment in which the thin client initiates a session on the Linux server. Is there an appropriate RFID reader for this environment? Can the RFID reader be integrated with this environment?
Imran—Islamabad, Pakistan
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This question is beyond the technical expertise of RFID Journal's editors, so we reached out to Steve Halliday, president of High Tech Aid. Steve is a consultant with many years of experience in radio frequency identification. Here is Steve's response:
"The answer is not straightforward, though. Everything depends on the thin client's capabilities. It is no problem to provide the data to the client over either an application or a browser. The big question is: How do you connect the reader into the system?
"If the client has the ability to connect to the reader, or the reader is sitting on the network as an Ethernet device, then there should be no problem, other than to write the custom software. I don't believe that a 'standard' RFID reader based on ISO 14443 or ISO 15693 has Ethernet capabilities, but I am sure someone must make one. If not, then it will be necessary to work out a method to connect through the client."
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