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RFID Tags Can Interfere With Medical Devices
An anonymous reader writes "A new study suggests RFID systems can cause 'potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices.' (Here is the JAMA study's abstract.) Among other things, electrical interference changed breathing machines' ventilation rates and caused syringe pumps to stop. Some hospitals have already begun using RFID tags to track a wide variety of medical devices, but the new finding suggests the systems may have unintended consequences."
I dub thee harzardous technology of the week. You can now join the cellphone, TV, radio, power grid, Internet, and so on in the list of hazardous technology. Welcome on board.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
Pop your undies in the microwave for ten seconds and they won't be reporting back to the mothership, don't worry.
But it is what's in my undies that concerns me...
on another tangent...
But how do I know that my microwave doesn't have an RFID reader that enables it to know that there is an RFID tag inside and it only goes through the motions of microwaving my undies, thereby rendering any RFID chip(s) in my undies untouched and fully functional? Far fetched? Future microwave dinners and popcorn might have RFID tags embedded which tell various microwave oven how long to cook the product. Can I get thicker tinfoil for my hat?
Even if you ignore this article's lack of specifics or detail (which makes it more or less FUD in my view), the title /. gave it is *flatly incorrect*. It's not the tags that are causing the interference; it is the reader/interrogator. These inexpensive passive UHF tags are just that, passive; it's the active (4W) signal that might be able to interfere.
Yes, there are serious concerns with RFID, but there's no point spreading vague FUD. In medical applications, interference obviously a very serious matter. Several groups are working on this problem, so how about we wait until we have solid results before we make up our minds?