Pharmaceutical Industry to Drive RFID Usage

The pharmaceutical industry may become the largest RFID vertical market in the next two to three years as item-level tracking takes hold, according to a new bulletin from the Venture Development Corporation (VDC).

“Due to the high value of pharmaceutical products and the compelling [return on investment] for most communities within the supply chain,” the industry should have great interest in and influence on RFID, VDC said.

The pharma industry will also “set the spec” on using RFID for tracking within high-volume, global supply chains, the company predicted.

But several hurdles must be addressed, VDC said. Those include several supply-chain issues, such as price, frequency and performance considerations.

Firms outside the pharma industry are waiting to see how drug manufacturers incorporate RFID before they move ahead too quickly, said research from VDC’s 2006 RFID Planning Service. It called pharma the perfect “incubator” for item-level RFID applications because it has high-value and high-volume products, making financial outlays relatively easy to justify. — Michael Causey