Douglas Adams would have said it had he been alive. RFID hype and panic cycles are notorious. Either RFID is end all to this world's problems - when it helps mankind be ever more dare I say be more efficient by keeping track of its myriad consumables, or it is the root of all evil - when it stops pacemakers and defibrillators from working. The recent article that has caused all this brouhaha is an innocuous and well researched and lucidly written paper by 5 dutch researchers, published by the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA for short).

Quite Simply all that is being said by the paper is this - "Strong RF signals cause EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) in electronic devices thereby disrupting their normal mode of operation". Specifically it says, off-the-shelf RFID readers can cause malfunction of "critical care equipment" in hospitals when used in their proximity.

It doesn't make any assertion about RF signals causing bodily harm at all, just in case you were wondering.

Hmm.. that's fair isn't it? - If I use my cellphone (1-4W) next to a speaker, it causes the speaker to sputter, so it is quite likely that a strong RF emitter like a 3W RFID reader (by comparison a microwave typically radiates 700W) should cause problems when put next to an electronic device. The 2.5G iphones radiate about 1.59W and the article points out that a similar study carried out in 2007 by the same researchers has found that newer cellphones cause similar problems like shown with RFID in the proximity of critical care equipment.

Woah! what is more common - a cellphone or a 3W UHF RFID reader?. Last I heard we had half the population of this world outfitted with a cellphone, but only a few tens of thousands of UHF RfID readers sold. Let's take solace in the fact that although the research is credible and regulation should therefore take some kind of action, we better worry about cell-phones first.

Alright, so I said we have time but does it still mean RFID has no future in Hospitals?. Let me try and be as resounding as I can about this - RFID is a general term encompassing many different frequencies, power-levels and applications. Failing in one very specific and worst case test of RFID, DOES NOT mean the death of RFID across the board.

Infact, the most common frequency in use in hospitals for consumables authentication, patient management and drug tracking is 13.56 MHz (typically at 200mW) which surprisingly finds no mention in the paper. Instead a 868Mhz reader operating at potentially more than the 2W ERP allowed by European regulations, which hardly is popular in hospitals to begin with is a huge cause for concern - why again?!. This is like being afraid of all tomatoes unequivocally because there is one out there that can potentially harbor salmonella - you would have to be a little paranoid to stop eating tomatoes altogether won't you?.

All being said, one must give credit to the effort put by the researchers ( test cases are online at http://www.amc.nl/?pid=5266) and their results but we must take a deep breath, be rational and NOT PANIC.