- Asset Management in Healthcare and Beyond
- Offering Tech Options to a Wider Audience
- Tracktio to Build Up Its Development Team
Identification technologies company RFiD Discovery is expanding its offerings with the acquisition of Spanish real-time location system (RTLS) provider Tracktio by its parent company, Paragon ID. With this acquisition, RFiD Discovery says it is furthering its presence in RFID technologies and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), to additional solutions such as angle-of-arrival systems provided by Quuppa, as well as LoRa and ultra-wideband (UWB). The purchase of Tracktio follows Paragon ID’s controlling interest purchase of Apitrak last year, as RFiD Discovery expands its offerings and its geographic reach.
Paragon ID provides solutions across four sectors, according to Arron Duddin, the company’s global sales and business development director: government identification, ticketing, payments and track-and-trace. Its government-based ID systems include passports and national identity cards, while its ticketing solutions are in use for public transit payment systems in major cities, such as Paris, London, Cairo, Madrid, Los Angeles and New York. The bank card systems leverage Paragon ID’s 13.56 MHz HF RFID technology.
The company also offers track-and-trace solutions. In 2018, Paragon ID invested in RFiD Discovery, which has since developed a multi-technology location-tracking Internet of Things platform designed to locate assets and individuals using diverse technologies like active and passive RFID, Wi-Fi, GPS and BLE. RFiD Discovery’s solution includes everything from label production using chips from third-party providers, to reader installation and integration, as well as data management for asset tracking.
Asset Management in Healthcare and Beyond
RFiD Discovery provides healthcare solutions for more than a hundred hospitals in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), as well as others in Britain and elsewhere, for the purpose of medical device asset tracking. The University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust won an RFID Journal Award this year for its RFiD Discovery technology implementation to manage equipment at its University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust facility (see U.K. Hospital Boosts Efficiency with Expansive RFID Deployment). The technology is also being used in other industries, ranging from manufacturing to aviation and oil and gas to automotive.
Arron Duddin
To provide a more complete offer, with software-as-a-service and cloud by design, Paragon ID acquired France’s Apitrak in 2021—so although the company’s history was U.K.-centric and healthcare-oriented, it has been expanding in recent years. While healthcare continues to be Paragon ID’s lead market for track-and-trace solutions, Duddin says, “We have a presence in a lot of different areas.”
Tracktio was founded in Barcelona in 2015, with a focus on RTLS solutions in industrial markets, according to Fran Pinyol, the company’s cofounder and director. Its customers are in the construction, mining and manufacturing sectors, including the top three mining companies in the world, as well as one of the top chemical and oil and gas firms. Tracktio’s customers are located in 20 countries worldwide, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East,
The company offers solutions, using any of seven different tracking technologies, customized to meet customers’ specific needs. “We typically listen to customers, understand what problem they want to solve, and then we recommend the optimal solution.” Its solutions fall withing three categories: personnel management, asset management and process tracking of processes, often using data collected by asset- or people-management technologies.
This latest offering provides context for the data being collected, Pinyol explains, adding, “Location identification without knowledge is not enough, so our mission is to is to let customers understand and manage their processes.” The company offers a single software platform that suits multiple use cases, which he says is designed to be easy to deploy, with no developer required, and implementable within a few days. Tracktio also provides advice for deployment and works with local partners.
Offering Tech Options to a Wider Audience
The Tracktio acquisition took place this summer, and RFiD Discovery intends to expand its own track-and-trace solution offerings to include additional technologies beyond passive HF and UHF RFID. The company provides BLE, LoRa and UWB, among other technologies, for the active locating of assets or individuals. Its products are used in mines, as well as in the oil and gas industry, Duddin says, and it specializes in providing solutions for challenging environments.
Fran Pinyol
Tracktio offers its own tracking software suite, known as TrackSphere, for track-and-trace workflows, location-based analytics, real-time inventory and personnel supervision, enabling users to improve safety and productivity. RFiD Discovery sees a future demand for these active RTLS technologies, to enhance—or as an alternative to—passive RFID systems. “We really wanted to enhance our technical capabilities,” Duddin states, “and also better access the markets and the environments that might require active technology for real-time data.” While the company already serves many of the same markets that Tracktio’s partners do, it didn’t want to be limited by technologies such as passive UHF. “We’re not beholden to a specific technology.”
Duddin sees a trend toward full solutions that might benefit from RTLS technology, or that might require a hybrid approach. Some companies, for instance, could use passive UHF RFID tags to track the movement of inventory through portals, where tags would be interrogated by fixed readers, into or out of a warehouse. However, such businesses could also benefit from active technology that could provide a view into forklifts or other high-value assets, as well as personnel moving around a workspace in real time.
With RFiD Discovery’s technology, Paragon ID explains, users could capture data from more than one system on a single platform. “I think, ultimately, our customers are about improving their bottom line, improving their safety or improving their compliance,” Duddin states. “And by being able to answer those demands with a hybrid solution, you can help them achieve that with a full, overarching solution.”
Tracktio to Build Up Its Development Team
The company plans to integrate Tracktio’s RTLS data into the RFiD Discovery platform, while Tracktio will continue to offer its existing software platform and operate out of its current Barcelona office. The company is small in terms of employees, Duddin says, adding, “That’s why we need to scale them up. They’ve done a very good job of building some great technology and in building a product that is really stable.”
The company typically supplies solutions to third-party solution providers rather than working directly with end users. That business model has enabled it to remain small until now, because most sales and deliveries have been carried out by its partners. RFiD Discovery is now investing in growing the team at that location, by increasing the development capacity.
In that way, Duddin says, “They can not only focus on some of the Spanish-speaking markets in terms of selling the solutions that we already have,” but also expand into other areas. The acquisition is part of a trend in recent years in which RFID and RTLS companies have been consolidating. That may indicate the technology is maturing, Duddin speculates, and that there is a need for large companies to offer scalable, full solutions. “We know being able to offer multiple technology solutions to customers is critical.”
RFiD Discovery’s platform has been adopted in healthcare and industrial environments by more than 100 hospitals, as well as by manufacturing and logistics businesses in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Australia and Africa. The RFiD Discovery acquisition will provide it with the resources to grow, Pinyol says. “The market is changing,” he states. “Obviously, customers know way more than before [about RTLS technology] and have higher expectations. Putting a dot in a map is not enough.” He adds, “You cannot implement a digital strategy without real-time knowledge of where things are. This is the foundation on which we provide the process analytics.”
Key Takeaways:
- Paragon ID continues to expand following its acquisitions of RFiD Discovery and Tracktio, in order to provide more options to its customers.
- The Tracktio purchase is part of an effort to serve customers that require more options in addition to passive RFID.