Aileen Ryan, President and CEO of the RAIN Alliance featured on the latest episode of IoT Unplugged, as she delved into RAIN technology, the Alliance’s role in driving adoption and established and emerging industries that are benefiting from deployment.
RAIN technology is an ultra-high frequency passive RFID used for identifying and tracking objects and has experienced significant growth in recent years, shipping 45 billion tags globally by 2023.
Thanks to the evolution of RAIN technology – which was created almost 20 years ago – RAIN chips have become smaller, from over one square centimetre 15 years ago to 0.7 square millimetres today and now offer longer read ranges up to 25 metres.
Retail, as an early adopter of RAIN technology, uses it for inventory management and as a result, inventory accuracy has improved significantly. Other industries to deploy it increasingly are logistics, which it improves tracking and efficiency in package transportation and healthcare, to track high-value pharmaceuticals.
“Hospitals and pharmaceuticals are starting to use RAIN to make sure the right drug goes to the right patient at the right time, but also to prevent what’s called a diversion of drugs,” explained Ryan. “Diversion of drugs means the drug doesn’t end up with the patient that it was supposed to be with and somehow it ends up sold on the black market.”
Taking a real-life case from the Texas Children’s Hospital, Ryan said that the hospital needed to make sure a specialised paediatric cancer drug – approximately $3 million a vial – was available when they needed it, and that RAIN technology was supporting that.
Looking ahead, Ryan noted she expected the emergence of digital product passports to be a major opportunity for RAIN technology as they require certain products, including electronics and textiles, to contain detailed information about the product and its value chain.
To hear more from Aileen Ryan and her insights into RAIN RFID, tune into the full podcast episode available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at the link below.
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