Published by Computachem Services

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Gosh you lot are a reticent crowd.
Or, is that you are all so busy that you read the articles and do not express, back to the editor, any opinion on the opinions?
Writing about 'IT' in pharmacy is not an endless landscape and there is only so much we can cover if the discussion is one-way.
That is, exploring subjects is made more difficult if it is conducted in a vacuum.
That said, let's try another tack.

Over the past year or so I have basically been writing about 'change'.
We all know that no one likes change so maybe that is what is wrong.
Writing about something we would rather not think about.

Well, that's fine.
There is nothing inherently wrong in deciding to be either a change driver, a change watcher or a change victim. What you can not be is a change phantom.
Since 2000 there has been a lot of change - as well as the threat of change.
Some very obvious but most not so every day, in your face.

With the deregulation and retail competition threat being a good example of the former and the evolution of expanded POS use being a good example of the latter.

In these pages we have canvassed real or perceived change factors covering a multiple subject list. Alphabetically we have tried to convey bits and pieces regarding:

· barcodes
· broadband communications
· collaboration
· common data bases and data alignment
· dispensary systems
· deregulation
· e.scripts and pos interoperability
· government projects, mediconnect and healthconnect
· grocery competition
· gst, accounting and dead time
· medical and other errors
· online relationships
· unique numbering
· market research
· pan panic
· professional associations
· shrinking markets
· standards
· technology and staff
· tribalism
· trout fishing *
· turn over orders
· vapour ware patents
· wholesaler numbering regimes, and
· zzz -global trends and other international models of probable change

Be nice to think that someone is keeping score and is measuring the predictions and other opinion pieces with the 'real' world experience out there.
Never mind, from where I sit, 'change' is evident in all of the factors above so I guess most readers are the silent type or are still 'watchers'.

So, I thought it is time to get way out front and talk about issues that are almost virginal in their present state.
But who knows how quickly the situation, with these matters in pharmacy, will change. It is already underway, more or less, and in general retail markets overseas.
What is it?

Radio Frequency Identification - RFID.

A subject with as much disinformation, mythological and demonic threats and bad hair day emotion as any human nature watcher could ever wish for.

Ah, bliss, even worse than the good old Australia Card, smart card brouhaha (which is on it's way back too, but that is another story).

First we have to acknowledge rule 1 to rule 10 and rule 101, which is refer to rule 1 about data capture technologies. It is NOT the technology that is the issue, it IS the data.

Even after twenty years, people still refer to the 'barcode' as if a barcode is a 'thing'. It is no such thing, merely ink on paper representing information. If the information, usually a number, is wrong then the 'barcode' reading will be wrong. The barcode is only a means to capturing data electronically without re-working the effort by re-keying with all that keying brings about.

Think about it buzz word terms. The printed number represented by bars and spaces is dataware, the barcode reader is hardware, the decryption is software, the transaction is middleware and the human operator provides the wetware component. (we are mostly water - get it?).
The idea being to minimise, eliminate if possible, the wetware element - coz the wetware bit is the only one that can think and can therefore make mistakes.

So simple that often smart folk can't see it.
Particularly when it comes to privacy.
I get knotted knickers whenever privacy and security are trotted out as big bad bogeys in the context of barcodes, smart cards and (now) RFID.

No such thing threatens anyone in the use of these tools in retail applications.
Worry about the Internet, Nigerians and 10 year old hackers - sure - but this sort of stuff is helpful, not hurtful.

Not, that is, until we have a chip in our left ear!
Just kidding.
All that technolgy does, besides eliminating wetware-induced mistakes, is to do 'it' faster.

And, what is even more galling is that technology, alone, is no threat to anyone.
Quite the opposite.
What is dangerous and who are potentially villainous is the wetware component.

Take a faxed discharge summary compared to the improvements from the coming electronically transacted message.
One can be read and accessed by anyone - the other will be encrypted and otherwise protected from both the casual and committed snoop.

Oh, I know, there are real threats when technolgy is implemented incorrectly with little or no protection, standards and so forth.
But is that a reason we should stay one-dimensional, manually restrained?
Of course not, and nor will we.

So, now that is off my chest and is clearly in black and white terms lets return to RFID.

Let me tell you what you need to know in three words - a long time.
Or four, if you wish to insert your own expletive deleted before 'l' and after 'a''.

It will be a very relatively long time before RFID becomes a ubiquitous, retail community pharmacy, technology tool.
Perhaps a hospital pharmacist may see it in several years time - perhaps not.

In simple lay person terms this is because of cost, performance and above all convenience.
Which is best explained this way.
A barcode reader cannot (today) read a RFID label.
OK?
Which means that, for all current practical purposes, a wetware operator will need two pieces of hardware to read the labels.

Got it?

Picture the last time you bought expensive clothing.
The garment was protected from shoplifters by a RFID tag attached as removable plastic button.
Notice, as you do, that the wetware assistant did not use the POS scanner to read the button?
No, it is read by a separate, mains powered proprietary device.
Chalk and cheese.
Oil and water.
Sydney, Melbourne - very different modes of operation.

The other underlining parameter is cost.
And, it is more the cost of the item being protected, transacted or consumed than the hardware or software costs.

A simple rule would be say data regarding a costly asset is better processed by RFID than a consumer item.
A dress versus a packet of bandaids.
A photocopier versus the copier ink packet.

Another possibility, closer to home, is medical misadventure - in error minimisation in hospitals. Electronic patient tags and electronically tagged dosages, for example.
See this next year?
No way.

The major performance difference is that some RFID tags can be read/write.
Like a smart card is read/write.
And, costs a hundred times more than barcode printing.
Not going to be used in general retail consumer item tracking on planet earth this side of neverland.

The most commonly cheap version of an RFID label is the microchip now, mostly, mandatory for animal registration.
Your doggie and moggie are already big brothered - I trust their privacy is not an issue?

In terms of functionality there is one advantage - as in RFID v barcode. And it is not distance.
A cheap microchip needs to be as close to a reader that a laser barcode device needs to be to the packet.

It is invisibility.
A barcode has to be 'seen' by the hardware (and the wetware) tool to be read- a RFID label does not.

Picture the most commonly expected retail sector application now being tested in the USA and elsewhere.

Tracking freight, pallets, containers, perhaps cartons of sensitive, costly, merchandise.
Flat screen TV for example.
A barcode has to be on the outside somewhere to be seen and read.
Which has two obvious problems.
It will get damaged and, if seen, it can be removed or damaged by nefarious types, who use the local pub as a double-discount retail outlet.

Whereas the RFID label can be protected from physical contact and thereby 'hidden' to ensure more end-to-end security of tracking.

Picture again!

A fork truck driver who has to
a) track the movement of the pallet by RFID and
b) alternatively the carton by barcode - she or he will require two devices - thereby needing to be a two-hand Kylie or a two-hand Luke. With all that implies. As they say in the classics -Furgetaboutit.

While we are on the fairy tale bent lets put the other lulu to bed.
Have you read recently that grocers will implement systems where the trolley will pass through a 'checkout' and every and all items will be 'scanned'?

Well, maybe I can't sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but would you like another one?
There is the Story Bridge in Brisbane or the nice one in Hobart?

Think about it?
Barcodes won't work in this crazy way; they have to be seen, and individually, almost physically, touched. Ditto micro chip type RFID labels.
Even if the manufacturer has a mind explosion and replaces the $.00001 cost of inked labels with $.10 radio ones.
It will have to be yet unseen, unknown, and technolgy that is still, way back, on the laboratory back burners.

So there you have it.
Sermon of the month.
Lesson of the year.
Don't trust anyone who breathes, writes, walks and speaks the wonders of RFID who is over 5-years of age and definitely never after 5 PM in the pub.

Or if you meet any item of wetware spruiking RFID systems as being ready-to-go for retail pharmacy is a) from planet Org, or
b) is talking bluechip vapourware.

Pat Gallagher
(*? Just checking that you were reading