It was in healthcare that one of the largest volume RFID applications occurred - 30 million tags so far on Diprivan drug syringes by AstraZeneca. This application was unique in being the first and so far only application of chipless RFID tags in volume other than at a few millimeters range. However, this was an anomaly. Today the Healthcare RFID sector mainly concerns error prevention and traceability of staff and patients with variants such as staff tags that send an alarm, if pressed, that locates the staff member to colleagues. Another variant is tagging mothers and their new borne babies to prevent mismatching later. All these applications involve modest numbers of tags. However, with the probability that the FDA will mandate item level tagging of drugs to deter counterfeiting and the move to tag all assets even down to laundry in hospitals for efficient management and theft prevention, there will be many applications in the millions and above in the not too distant future. Later, a proportion will be chipless to keep costs down. Then the AstraZeneca tags will not look like anomalies but will be seen as prophetic. Meanwhile note the unusually high prevalence of active tags in this sector to achieve long range despite concerns about them interfering with life support equipment.
