In assisted living facilities and nursing homes, a highly capable usage of RFID technology is in its application of managing wandering behavior in persons with dementia in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. Active RFID systems employ a powered electrical circuit which allows them to be far more sensitive to the presence of the tag.
This approach has distinct advantages over passive RFID that can operate only at short ranges. A person wandering and intending to elope may deliberately charge an exit door, giving very short notice of their intentions to leave. A passive RFID system might not have sufficient time to respond to the rapid approach of the individual since it activates only when the individual is very close to the door at perhaps the last moment and so may fail to lock the door in time, prohibiting their departure.Active tags can be read by readers at distances measured in hundreds of meters and can be precisely tailored to lock an exit door when an individual is several meters away from it. Active tags must be worn on the wrist, ankle or as a pendant and cannot be implanted. Implantation of powered RFID devices results in the attenuation of the radio signal generated by the devices, shortening their range from a few hundred meters to just a few meters. There are also questions related to teratogenicity of long-term exposure to strong radio waves emanating from an internal device and possible interference of active implanted RFID with other implanted devices such as pacemakers, however, experience with low-power active RFID devices has found them to be safe.Most active RFID systems improve upon passive RFID through their extended transmission range. In general, however, they do not provide information about their location unless readers are placed in strategic locations and the signal strength received from the active RFID tag is used as an indication of the relative position of the tag to the readers. This is where greater signal strength equates to proximity to the reader. One problem associated with attempting to triangulate tag position based on signal strength alone is the ‘multipath’ problem which confronts RFID use in indoor environments. Multipath refers to the phenomenon of multiple radio reflections which originate from a source confounding the reliable location of the source of the radio signal.This strategy works provided the tag’s signal strength remains constant over its lifetime, which can be guaranteed since signal strength is related to battery power levels. The tag’s battery life varies as a function of how often it responds to probes for its identification number by the readers. A tag receiving infrequent probes will have its battery last over a decade while a tag probed multiple times per second may exhaust its battery in a year or so. Longevity is guaranteed nevertheless.
With RFID, Think Process and Not Just Technology
As always, the very real danger is that managers themselves will become seduced by the new technologies and then appreciate them only superficially and misunderstand their true purpose and potential.
How are Firewall Systems Incorporated in Remote Monitoring?
Firewall implementations are available today from a wide array of vendors. With the ever-increasing awareness of network security and the costs of lost information, many new firewall implementations continue to emerge.
What is ITSP Sourcing?
An entire library could be written on this topic. In the ITSM world, sourcing is considered part of the service design model and something every business customer plans well before the service requirements are finalized.
