By Gene J. Koprowski
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Chicago, IL, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Alyson O'Mahoney adopted a pet from a non-profit group in New York that trains seeing-eye dogs for the blind. The dog had a radio frequency identification microchip inserted under its skin. The chip's technology can be read with a wireless scanner and provide the name of the dog and its owner, as well as contact information. "I transferred the personal info on the chip registration to us, so I feel safe that if my dog gets lost, someone will know how to track me down through this," said O'Mahoney, an executive who lives in upstate New York. The chipping of pets and other animals, as the practice is called, is gaining speed as a trend internationally. It is most popular in Europe, where upwards of 25 percent of pet owners in some countries are said to have had veterinarians outfit their beloved beasts with the electronic tracking device. "This has been adopted overseas -- there are so many players in the marketplace," said Jeannine Taaffe, vice president of marketing for Banfield, a pet health care provider in Portland, Ore., with 400 hospitals and 1,000 veterinarians in the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico.In the United States, however, only about 5 percent of pet owners have opted for the wireless technology. "That's not acceptable," Taaffe said.That may change someday soon. The Iams Co., the pet-food maker in Dayton, Ohio, last summer pledged to donate 30,000 wireless RFID scanners to animal shelters, which pick up lost and stray pets. The hope is to induce the marketplace to create better RFID technology, to encourage competition in the marketplace and help develop a single scanner that can read all types of RFID chips. The Web site, readallchips.com, has emerged to promote the concept, too. The site was created by a group called Reuniting Pets and Families, formed by a joint effort by the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Human Society of the United States. Veterinarians like the idea of outfitting pets with the RFID devices, and state law in California requires animal shelters to scan all pets for the chips. "Micro-chipping is a permanent form of ID," said Karen Johnson, a doctor of veterinary medicine and vice president of Banfield pet hospitals. "It's a good back up."Like all new technologies, there are both benefits and costs of using RFID on pets. The biggest benefit, Johnson said, is the chip cannot be removed -- the procedure for implanting the chip does not even require the animal to be on medication. "It's not a surgical technique," Johnson said. "The chip is inserted under the skin -- it's about the size of a grain of rice. It's quick and easy. No sedation is required."The downside of the technology is it does not update itself. If a pet owner moves and forgets to have the identification data updated on the chip, and the dog is lost, the owner may never be found. There also is a cost of around $50 for the chip, and additional costs if new programming of the owner ID database is required. Another downside: There is no single scanner currently available in the United States that can read all chips according to vets. Many chips operate on different frequencies of the radio spectrum, from 125 kilohertz, or cycles per second, to 134.2 kilohertz. Banfield in late December sent letters to clients who had purchased microchips for their pets, telling them of the latter problem. Last year, the hospital group began selling 134.2-kilohertz RFID chips, using technology endorsed by the International Standards Organization. "We believe that all scanners should read all microchips," said Scott Campbell, a doctor of veterinary medicine who also is chairman and chief executive officer of Banfield.The two leading makers of the technology are Digital Angel Corp. of South Saint Paul, Minn., and AVID Identification Systems Inc. of Norco, Calif. Veterinarians and others are actively encouraging AVID to sell the RFID scanner that it sells overseas here in the U.S. as well. In addition to pets, farm animals such as cows can be outfitted with the microchips. There also are applications for human patients. "RFID technology in the healthcare arena holds enormous promise," said Lisa J. Sotto, a partner with Hunton & Williams LLP, a law firm in New York City. Sotto, an information management expert, testified on the issue Jan. 11 before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics. "If its use becomes widespread," she said, "it can lead to greater accuracy and efficiency in treating patients by making medical information immediately accessible to healthcare providers."The prospects for the industry are apparently bright. In the summer of 2003, Laurus Funds, a New York investment bank, invested about $7 million in Digital Angel, according to Scott Bluestein, a senior investment analyst at Laurus. "We looked at the business," Bluestein told UPI's Wireless World. "The collateral is there to secure it. We met with management several times. We are comfortable with them. They are capable of executing what they told us. The technologies that they have are very interesting technologies that have broad applications. The investment made sense -- if you look two, three, four years down the line." Bluestein's firm invested a total of about $400 million in 100 firms last year.-- Wireless World is a weekly series examining emerging wireless telecommunications technologies, by Gene Koprowski, who covers technology for UPI Science News. E-mail:  sciencemail@upi.com