HID Connects Podcast Episode 7: Is Location Services Technology Cool or Creepy?
Intro: In today’s world, we often hear the idea and the promise that everything is connected. As you reflect on your own life, you may not realize how many things in your home, your car, and your office, are connected. The Internet of Things paired with real-time location-based technology is paving the way for a new frontier including the security and identity industry. But is this level of connectivity always a good thing? Joining us for this episode of HID Connects are experts Bevan Hayes, Kerry Brock, and Mark Robinton to answer the important question: Is location services technology cool or creepy?
Matt Winn (Host):
Hello everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening — whatever time it is, and wherever in the world you may be. My name is Matt Winn, your podcast host and resident secure identities nerd. Welcome back to the HID Connects podcast.
Now in today's world, we often hear the idea and the promise of “everything is connected.” And as you reflect on your own life, you may not realize how many things in your home, your car, or your office are literally connected via the Internet of Things. So whether it's your smartphone, your smart speaker, and well even you, the Internet of Things paired with real-time location-based technology is paving the way for a new frontier, including the security and identity industry. But is this level of connectivity always a good thing? This notion will be the focus of today's discussion, which we’ll summarize with this episode's burning question: Is location services technology cool or creepy?
Now, for the second week in a row, I'm alone in the studio. I'm not sure if I smell bad or if I made someone mad, but courageously joining me virtually is a panel of three excellent experts on this topic. Beaming in from one of my favorite cities on the planet — Vancouver, BC — is Kerry Brock, President of GuardRFID, and a true expert on real-time location services or RTLS, for short, particularly in the healthcare world. Kerry, thanks for joining us. How's Vancouver? And how are you?
Kerry Brock:
I'm good. Thanks Matt, for having me on this episode. Things in Vancouver are beautiful, sunny, it is always great to be near the sea and mountains.
Matt:
Wonderful. Hopefully much less hot than Texas. So, I may be coming up to visit soon.
Kerry:
I can guarantee it is.
Matt:
I'm happy for you. And, also joining us from the Minneapolis area, hopefully less hot than Austin, is another RTLS guru, our VP of IoT services at HID, Mark Robinton. Mark, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. How are you today?
Mark Robinton:
Doing well, Matt. Happy to join you guys. And yes, summer is definitely the time to be in Minneapolis. Do this in January, we'll be trading spaces on who wants to come here.
Matt:
I will pass on Minneapolis in January, but thanks for that. And last, but most definitely, not least, we have another Canadian joining us today and dialing in from Toronto, Bevan Hayes, our Director of Business Strategy for Mobile. Bevan, appreciate your time as always. How are things with you?
Bevan Hayes:
Doing really well, thank you. We're not as hot as Austin, but we are in a heat wave here, but no smoke anymore.
Matt:
Well, that's good. Glad things are clearing up and glad that you are with us. So alright everyone, now that you have met our panel, let's get started, shall we? Alright, so the first question, it's more of a definition question, we just wanna make sure we're all on the same page and aligned on what we're talking about. And Kerry, I will start with you. How do you define location services?
Kerry:
Well with the definition of RTLS, the acronym is real-time location systems, and I think of it in three components: the ability to track, identify, and locate either people or assets.
Matt:
Mark, how do you want to add on to that? Anything you'd like to contribute on the definition?
Mark:
Yeah, I think, it's really the way people use location information to make decisions, to Kerry's point, you know, that can be identifying, locating/tracking something, but I think, what we're seeing is it's the information that's valuable at the end of the day, location is just a methodology to get it. So, that's where it's such an exciting space that, you know, more people can use that information, to make better business decisions or improve their outcomes.
Matt:
Excellent. And Bevan, I want to make sure you have a chance to chime in. How do you feel about that definition? Anything you want to add?
Bevan:
I'm pretty good with it. I think I would add a little bit because of the mobile aspect. There's certain things that can happen at that actual point of information. And then another thing that I think is really important is the individual aspect versus the aggregate data. There's really two streams there, but it really is just capture and use of positioning data.
Matt:
Okay, cool. So capturing that data, let's talk more about the ecosystem itself. So Kerry, back to you, now that we've got the definition understood. Tell us about the various components in these RTLS systems.
Kerry:
So main components, we're talking about infrastructure based, RTLS systems today. So they have a series of readers, or in the case of, Bluetooth® LE technology, we would define those as gateways. So they're kind of interchangeable, those things. And imagine you have a grid of these devices across the typical indoor location that you're trying to position the assets or the people. And then the secondary component that you'll have is something that we call a tag exciter and on the BLE side of this, you have a similar, device. And basically what that's doing is that's creating an instant checkpoint, an instant waking up of the tag. So it's giving you a more precise location at, ingress or egress points. It can also be used to determine things like a room level accuracy that's often used in in healthcare.
Beyond the devices, which are typically networked to some kind of WiFi network or closed network system. You have the tags and that's probably the, the piece that the customer is most, or the end user is most interested in is the form factor of these tags. And there's many form factors, and that's one of the evolutions in the market. And so the tag is based on the type of asset or person that you're tracking, the value of it and the battery life that you're looking for from that tag. And then the last component is the software. That's really essential, what does that user interface look like for the end user? And, are you connecting that software to other technologies within the facility? So it could be integrations into things like access control, it could be integration into video management systems.
And in the healthcare space, I would say that they would connect to the most systems of any RTLS use cases I've ever seen. So things like, they could be patient records, they could be nurse call systems. There’s a multitude, that could be in smart devices in the hospital. So Matt, at the beginning you talked about everything being connected and all the smart things. Well, if you think of a hospital, there's all kinds of hospital equipment and medical devices that are also smart devices. So I'm thinking now in terms of smart buildings, smart hospitals. And so those are really the three main components that you have to consider, when deploying these systems and you know, what are the use cases and what data do you need to extract from it. And typically customers today have become more sophisticated and there's an interest in having a single pane of glass so that they can see all this information in one place and create that interconnectedness.
Matt:
Absolutely. With so many different components, you want to have that one lens to simplify things. So that's a common thread of various podcast episodes we've had thus far, there is all this technology behind the scenes, but the end user just wants to see the actual output, which is great. So thank you for sharing. That makes a ton of sense. Mark, I wanna hop over to you because Kerry brought up the notion of use cases and touched on healthcare. We'll come back to that very soon, I promise. But Mark, tell me more about some different use cases that you see, whether it's verticals, different types of organizations, who would want to use this type of technology and why, what are you seeing out there?
Mark:
Sure. So we see three main verticals that really are capitalizing. You know, healthcare is, I think the biggest, most, mature one that I'm sure, Kerry will share some more details on. The second area is what we call industrial, but it's really focused a lot on manufacturing. So if you think about a manufacturing floor, there's a lot of things moving around that need to be orchestrated. How you pick things, how you find work in progress, where your workers are to keep them safe, how you find material as you put it out into large fields or large warehouses. So location data, again, going back to my definition in the beginning, it's that information that helps you make those decisions faster or operate quicker. The third area I'd say is in the smart building side that Bevan plays in more, which is really around, space utilization, how you use the spaces that you're in, whether they're being efficient. And then, as a general theme across those verticals, I would say there's a lot of safety, security use cases, which as HID we're very interested in. But staff duress across multiple verticals, mustering things of that nature. Knowing where people are, you know, in the moment of an active shooter or a fire, I think is important that's been growing, both in its maturity and its importance in the overall market.
Matt:
Very good. Thanks. And Bevan, Mark teed you up quite nicely. So tell me more about use cases from your world and maybe emphasize the smart building landscape for us.
Bevan:
Sure. So in the smart building landscape and in mobile, we at HID are enablers. We have a vast ecosystem of partners that do really great things. They’re plumbers that do integration work or they create really cool experiences of place, occupant, experience app, tenant experience app, you name it. The name of the game right now is real estate rationalization. And a lot of companies are looking to right size their portfolio or help monetize a digital transformation or sustainability initiative. And this fits right in with it.
Matt:
Tell us more about this real estate rationalization and how does that technology fit into this. So Mark, you had talked about, you know, having the data you need to make decisions. Bevan in this case, you know, post pandemic world, people aren't in the office as much as they used to be. Gimme some examples of what that might look like and what type of information and insights people could derive to guide some of those decisions.
Bevan:
Sure. So, well it starts with the binary aspects, right? Like is somebody present or not? And you can look at that from the perspective of the building itself or a floor or a work zone. But then you can also start to layer in other information like how many people are there and then what cost center do they belong to. And I think these are gaps that have existed in the location services world for some time. There's all kinds of fancy WiFi systems and camera systems sensors under the desk, but they cannot really tell the story of cost centers. I think that's where it's going because people or companies allocate space by way of cost center. And in a flex work environment, you're dealing with capacities and other things that become really important as we try to over allocate, like we do in the airline industry, for example.
Matt:
Very nice. Now, Kerry, I'm gonna bring it back to you. Bevan had mentioned something about where we think things are going, but let's go back in time a little bit and talk about how RTLS has evolved over the years, you've been a player in this game for quite some time now. So you've got a really interesting perspective that we'd love to hear about. How have you seen this technology evolve from your perspective?
Kerry:
So I see it as about a 20 year evolution. That's about when RTLS emerged in the market and healthcare. As Mark mentioned earlier, as one of the first industries I'd say to experiment seriously with RTLS and really define use cases that were replicable from one facility to another. And I think that's where healthcare differs from some other industries, like Mark mentioned, manufacturing, but those facilities are purpose built for manufacturing, very specific. So the manufacturer of ball bearings is not the same as the manufacturer of microchips is not the same as the manufacturer of automotive parts. And so they're very different in what they need and their environments are very purpose built. Healthcare, I think was just a natural fit for RTLS. There's been an ongoing challenge of a growing aging population.
There's the challenges of things like this pandemic, which really, you know, put a light on some of the challenges our healthcare, you know, industry was already experiencing, especially in acute care hospitals, staff shortages, and an industry that tends to use outdated technology and not keep itself as current as it should. And I think RTLS, there's at least five use cases that are absolutely proven with real data, with real ROI, with real information that you can cookie cutter from, from one to the next hospital. So big or small can benefit from this. So it's not, you know, urban, rural, doesn't matter globally any hospital can benefit from these use cases. So I think what we've seen from an evolution, where has this come from, is now there's a broader choice of technology where they're really used to just, it started with one, tag form factors have evolved, battery life has improved incredibly, the cost of manufacturing the devices has improved.
And so there's now this improvement in both accuracy and reliability and this increased awareness and increased adoption. So that is, you know, what a market needs to make it more mature. And I think the piece between focusing on, you know, you actually need reliability in the technology, in my opinion, often more than you need accuracy. Although the market end user tends to focus on accuracy saying, I need to know where Mark is within three inches. Well, I don't, but what I need to know is where Mark is at all times. And so that is so much more important to patient safety, for example, or to staff safety than it really is about, you know, three meters is perfectly acceptable, but what I need to know is that I can rely on that. And I think there are very robust technologies and very reliable like we have at guard RFID, like we have at HID and, you know I think that's why it's become so well adopted.
Mark:
Very nice. Kerry? Three things I'd actually add to that. Okay. I think from a deployment point of view, we're seeing more ubiquity. You used to be much more kind of focused on areas, right? We're only doing this in the emergency department or only in the maternity ward. We see much more, how do I get visibility everywhere, which is, is due to some of those costs coming down as, as Kerry mentioned, I think the integrations are maturing. Again, used to be more of a purpose-built system for whether it was infant or nurse call, and it did what it did. I think that painted glass and the number of different IT systems — whether they're health records or security systems — that plumbing, as Bevan said, I think is becoming more critical in the healthcare side. And then, I love your point on the accuracy side.
Because it's always a question that customers ask in the beginning as they're trying to wrap their head around what the technology can do. But it's one of those things where most of the time they're asking the wrong question. I think, you know, a great example we've seen in industrial is that we had a customer who wanted to track forklifts and they wanted 10 centimeter precision because they heard some technology can do that, right? And the forklift is four meters long. So, you know, it's one of those things where if you get to the right aisle, you'll find it right. Telling you, you know, precisely on a map where it is, is great for demos, but the real-life workflows, those well-defined use cases are so significantly important to getting that ROI.
Matt:
And Bevan, I want to make sure you have a chance to jump in on this one too. How have you seen things evolve, especially from your frame of mind?
Bevan:
The ability to define and achieve success has evolved I think it's somewhat predicated on what these two have just spoken about and that really is consistency of that data, how reliable is it? And I think also we've gone through the whole Gartner swoop where we're now in a plateau. There was very heightened expectations early on. And, and I think in your intro you said “promise to do everything and anything.” And now it's kind of part of our mandate to make sure that we don't boil the ocean, we start off with incremental goals and follow an adoption roadmap.
Matt:
Excellent. And Bevan, I want to stick with you. Bonus question. Where do you think that we live on the adoption curve, and by we, I mean industry end user organizations picking up this technology? Have we hit the peak or are we at the bottom of the mountain? Or have we plateaued? Where are we at in terms of adoption?
Bevan:
I think there's several of these adoption curves in play. And so for RTLS, for example, it's maturing the proven use cases, proven ROI in other spaces, we're still fairly early on and folks are really struggling with the decisions that they've made in the past and are trying to stitch together a number of technologies to normalize data. And then they're coming to HID and companies like HID to try to establish a trusted identity to bring some normalizations of that data. So there, I think we're more early and we're seeing a lot of the premier brands and flagship buildings take that on. And over the course of the next couple of years, moving to more of fleet majority.
Matt:
And Kerry, I saw you nodding, with Bevan's statements there. Anything you want to add to the adoption curve question?
Kerry:
No, I agree with what he said. I see us as a slight plateau, but I feel we're going to grow. There's gonna be another level, to this space. I expect to see expanded use cases and talk a little bit about the future of the industry, but I think there's much more room for growth in this space, and we'll be amazed in a couple years as these new use cases come out. I’m expecting some hyper growth in this space.
Matt:
Exciting place to be. Very good. Mark, I want to switch gears just a little bit. You have this idea of location systems, location services, and namely the idea that maybe your employer — or if you're in a healthcare environment — that the hospital admin can see where you may be at all times. And it may be a bit big brother-ish. It may be, as the episode is titled, a bit creepy. One personal anecdote. So this was not at HID this was the job I had before HID and it wasn't my favorite job and I didn't have a lot to do for about two months. And they had a very nice bathroom within the building that we were in. It had a boombox, it smelled good. And so I would just kind of go and hang out in the bathroom for maybe an hour at a time and text my friends and play on social media.
And I would've hated if my employer would've known where I had been for that hour. So knowing that there are probably less than ideal employees like me, again, previous job — boss, not at this job — how do you assuage privacy concerns of an individual who may be having the beacon on their body and how that data is used, how it's stored, how it's transmitted, et cetera. So bathroom analogy aside, let's talk data privacy. What would you say to someone who has that concern and what does the landscape look like as it relates to RTLS?
Mark:
Yeah, sure. It's, it's a great question and one that obviously always comes up anytime you want to add technology to interact with people. What I see is a couple things. You know, privacy in general is all about a trade-off, right? So if you are not getting anything for that data, then your protection of that privacy is typically much higher, right? If you are exchanging, you know, your location for safety, for security, for productivity, something that you are personally benefiting from, I think the adoption is much better. And there's always going to be extremes on either side of that. But I think there's a huge kind of change management education piece that goes into that. You mentioned the storage side. So I think the difference between tracking and locating is nuanced, but important. So, you know, tracking the fact that you were in the bathroom for the last hour is much different than, “Where is Matt right now?”
Now, if I continue to refresh over and over again, I continue to see you're in the bathroom, but if you draw the analogy that where you are right now in the building is something I can find out by walking in there, right? I can walk past your desk, I can see if you're there or not. Pulling a report that says, where has Matt been for the last eight hours? Down to the minute, I think is where people feel it gets creepier. And that's where the data tends to, you know, be used in the aggregate. Where have people been for the last hour as a heat map, is a much different question. So finding Matt right now, I think, you know, people are more tolerable of it if they get something out of it. But where has Matt been is kind of a nuance, but important aspect. And getting back to the education which he was, Kerry has trainers on her team, who rollout the different technologies to help the stakeholders understand what it can do, what it can't do, what it's being used for. You know, does HR have access to the data or does your manager have access to the data? Right? Two completely different ways in which you would feel about that data being collected.
Matt:
Okay. Kerry, your name was brought up and we’d would love to learn more about that aspect. And anything else you want to offer. Because I think this is a really important question around how the data is used. So what's your take?
Kerry:
It's definitely a concern for employees in some cases, certainly in cases of unionized employees, where there might be an added level of scrutiny on how, people are, you know, monitored with these systems. But I will just say a couple things. Typically they're wearing these badges for safety. So let's say you have, let's say you're using them from a productivity workflow, that is true. And what Mark is saying is using things like heat maps and other things just to look at, you know, tag information. You can actually not even have a name shown, but have an identifier on the tag. So we use a numbered identifier. So I can see that tag 1-2-3-4-5 has been in the bathroom for an hour. But I, you know, that might be a concern that there's a safety issue for that person if they've, you know, something's happened to them.
In the case of nursing and staff duress, staff safety in hospitals, nurses do ask this question, “Well, I don't want to be tracked when I go outside for my coffee break” or if I need to step out of the hospital for something. So what we often tell them is, we only turn this on when you push a duress button. So our system can be configured not to record the location of the tag, but just to record the location of the alarm. And certainly the whole purpose of this system is staff safety. We already know we have staff shortages. We know we want to keep these clinical teams in as healthy shape as possible, so we don't want them injured or worse. And so having a badge that they can push a button and have that peace of mind that somebody is coming, but not monitoring them, is very much part of the education and the philosophy that the hospital takes to deploy that system.
And I would say the same thing goes for, you know, I would caution employers even in commercial or industrial applications, like, what information do you really need to know about that? Do I need to know that somebody's been in this location? Or do I need to know that somebody's in an area that is unsafe or they're not authorized to be in, which puts them at risk? And so, you know, you have to look at what these use cases are and what we're trying to accomplish. And so that would be something that I would highly recommend to, you know, our software allows this. If somebody's choosing a system, make sure that your user interface and that software and the permissions and the configurability of the system ensure that we are keeping people's privacy and information as protected and only being used as — Mark was saying this is a trade off of data versus privacy — that we're using the utmost care to make sure that somebody can't abuse this and become creepy. I think technology is not creepy, people are creepy. So, you know, it's people, you know, you’ve got to try to make sure that you eliminate potential opportunities for the opportunists to be creepy or to use this in a malicious way.
Matt:
Absolutely. Bevan, this point's so important, I want to make sure you have a chance to add in as well. So from a smart building perspective, mobile perspective — privacy — what do you think?
Bevan:
It's a big deal, especially when we're asking people to install something on their device, right? So education as Kerry and Mark spoke to is fundamental. Being clear on data use and PII and making sure that we're compliant with regulations that didn't exist 10 years ago, is key. I think also being able to demonstrate clear value for those participants, knowing the story of your building means a more sustainable building. It means a better experience of the place where our partners can go and build some really great use cases and be able to create productivity improvements for the those that are part of the program. I think also, providing options is gonna be key, to be able to say what data I'm willing to share with whom and for what purpose, and to be able to turn it off that on and off on your own.
Mark:
Yeah. Bevan, I think the, you know, the GDPR style concept where you're collecting data for a reason and it should only be used for that purpose — I think is part of the trust that any employer has to have with their employees in using this data, right? We're collecting it to keep you safe. We're collecting it to, you know, optimize our real estate. We're not collecting it to get you fired, to get you in trouble, to sell for marketing purposes, to vendors. You, I think there's a regulatory side to that, right? That's important. But I think it's philosophy of this data, both how you use it and how you protect it. As Kerry said, taking the right measures. I know there's a podcast on, the security industry as a whole and data protection that's, you know, critical to these kinds of systems. Because they are a honeypot of information that someone would be interested in.
Matt:
As Kerry said, technology is not creepy. Creepy people are creepy. And looking back, spending an entire hour in the bathroom was probably creepy of me to whoever was joining me in there. So we'll move on to the next topic. Bevan, I want to go back to you. So you had touched on adoption curves. Let's talk barriers to adoption. So how do we accelerate this? What obstacles or objections do you see when you're talking to folks who might be interested but may be hesitant on this technology? What are the barriers to adoption that you see?
Bevan:
Well, one, because RTLS and location services has been around for a long time and there was a lot of ways to skin the cat, so to speak. There’s a lot of misconceptions around the ability to succeed going forward. And so, we have to overcome some negative connotations that may have been there or investments that did not live up to expectations. Then immediately after that, we hit an IT barrier, right? To be able to get through security assessments quickly and bring it on site. So, reuse of infrastructure, ready made, security compliance pieces, security questionnaires, all of these things kinda help, reduce the amount of time because time kills in this case. And then thirdly, end user adoption. We spoke about it a few minutes ago. Just being able to make sure that, that everybody clearly understands the purpose, what value it brings to them, and demonstrate it in an incremental way.
Matt:
Very nice. Kerry, over to you. What do you see maybe in the healthcare space in terms of adoption barriers?
Kerry:
I think at the top of the list, one of them is cost. Hospitals are under extreme financial pressure, especially post pandemic. So that's a challenge. I think the inability to define the use case or the statement of work, and sometimes there's, you know, competing, priorities from different departments and they're trying to do too many things. I think Bevan mentioned at the very beginning, is having this adoption roadmap. I like to see it as, take the most pressing use case. Usually there's been a compelling event, the reason they need to make a change. So usually there's, you know, something on that, on that list. So I would say identify that, prove that out successfully, do the implementation well in the deployment and measure it and scale from there. If you try to do too much, you know, sometimes you run your resources both financial and people and you mentioned it without it will bring any of these projects to their knees if they choose to.
So, you know, I think you need to have all the stakeholders. I would say it is followed by clinical, in a hospital, if we don't have buy-in from the end users who are responsible for the patient population, we're going to be using these asset tracking systems, or they're gonna be wearing the tags themselves. You have to get them to buy in. And then I think the last thing is probably more outside of hospitals, but just straight up poor RF environments. So, you know, you have to match this RTLS technology with the environment that you're in. So if you need equipment or infrastructure for outdoor areas, make sure you're choosing a provider, you know, someone like HID who has proven outdoor equipment. If you have a hazardous environment, make sure it's got the certifications that you need for your environment.
Because we see this, and I've seen this time and time again, is they've made poor choices. And then you're trying to push that, you know, square peg into the round hole and it'll never work and it'll end up by the wayside. And I think Bevan was saying that earlier, is just, you know, then you've squandered those resources and to trying to get another RTLS project after that approved becomes an even harder battle because now you're going uphill because somebody's gonna say to you, why did they, you know, we already did this once and it didn't work, so why, why in the world would we do it again? And I would say on the companies I've talked to in the facilities organizations that did some of these RTLS deployments early on, they were the earlier adopters. They've probably had a failure and had to choose a different vendor and had to, you know, re-examine their scope of work and choose their vendor more wisely. So they've, you know, that that does happen.
Matt:
Sure. Mark, I want to switch gears just a bit. So we've talked about RTLS of the past, the present, some of the adoption barriers, adoption potential. Let's look into the future. What do you see as the future for RTLS? What's next?
Mark:
So I see two things, Matt. One, in any of these kinds of technologies, I think mapping the use case to the specific underlying technology is important and being able to solve different problems with different technologies. So, I think most of the traditional RTLS vendors have been a particular technology. Bluetooth®, Bluetooth® LE, UWB passive, RFID, active RFID, but they offered one, right? So you get the, “I have a hammer and everything looks like a nail” problem. These organizations, as they mature and understand RTLS have lots of different use cases and ultimately, to Kerry's point from an RF perspective, they're complex, right? And so I think being able to offer integration of multiple technologies that might be using LF for the room level certainty, but Bluetooth® for the ubiquity and UWB when you're in a particular area, I think is, is where it's gonna head.
You know, as the cost of all those come down, as the expertise in the different technologies comes up, you'll see more vendors consolidating and offering multiple technologies so that you can be more of a trusted advisor to solve the problems with the right technology and mix and match them. So I think the going back to that kind of ubiquity of deployment, people are thinking about this enterprise wide, right? How do I get visibility everywhere? But that means visibility, indoors, outdoors, clinical space, supply chain. So I think, you know, mixing all of those technologies together in the right way, that keeps the cost down, that is where the winners are gonna play out in the next, you know, three to five years.
Matt:
The puzzle pieces finally come together. That's good. Bevan, your turn. What do you think future of RTLS? What does it hold?
Bevan:
Pretty much same as what Mark had said, from a physical access control perspective, really looking at intent, right? Because in my world, we're using a mobile device, it's not necessarily a tag. And there's all kinds of really wonderful sensors on board that device that allow us to run different algorithms. Is this person running or are they walking? Did they fall? All of these things can be achieved if you have the right math. And then that helps us in our goal towards seamless access. And then I think the other thing that we touched on earlier is control over data. What does the story of the building look like? How often is location information shared with what systems? To what extent is data growth? And data storage and data computation are very real issues, particularly if you are looking at thousands of points, thousands of times a day.
Mark:
Bevan, I think one of the things you mentioned triggered a thought for me. I think there's a real risk of information overload and alert fatigue in these systems. So I think also applying the right intelligence, you know — whether it's the creepy humans or AI — to get the right information and being able to, you know, manage by exception and know when things need to alert you is gonna be key. Because just knowing where everything is all the time isn't helpful. Right? Knowing Bevan is in trouble, knowing Kerry isn't where she's supposed to be, are the actions that people want to take.
Bevan:
Yeah. And systems.
Matt:
Data is one thing. Insights are another. Okay. Excellent. Future sounds bright. All right, Bevan, we're going to go through our final round of questions, okay. And we'll start with you. So as the episode is titled, when it comes to RTLS technology, is it cool or is it creepy?
Bevan:
I'm gonna say awkward, right? <Laugh>. Some people might think it's a little creepy, but all in all, the braces are coming off and, there’s a bright future ahead.
Matt:
Excellent. Evolving into our teenage years. I like that. Awkward. Good answer. Mark, what do you think? Cool or creepy?
Mark:
I'm gonna go with cool. Obviously I've been in this space for a long time, seen it evolve. I love Kerry's analogy, which I think we're gonna make it into a bumper sticker that, the technology is cool, but the people are creepy. It's what you do with it, right? So, to that point, I think the fact that we have this information is cool from the potential of it, right? All the things you can do, all the ways in which you can change your business, but you gotta do it in the right way at the end of the day.
Matt:
Absolutely. And Kerry, you've given us the soundbite of the season, so thank you for that. But, final question to you. RTLS, cool or creepy.
Kerry:
I definitely think it's cool. I don't think I would be in a business that I found creepy or I thought was doing damage. I think we're gonna find use cases that we think are even more cool. I think there is, we're going to go through a period of innovation. I think we're going to see different things evolve even more widespread, like using wayfinding. We didn't really touch on that today. Another, you know, great emerging RTLS, use case multimodal tags, be able to go indoors and outdoors seamlessly, I think is going to be really amazing. Still today, even though the technology's been around 20 years to prevent the abduction of infants and people go, wow, that act, you know, people actually, you know, try to steal, babies. There’s lots of mix ups we can prevent, you know, match the right parent caregiver with the right baby. And we can, you know, hopefully diffuse assaults on our healthcare workers, which we so vitally need. There’s an unlimited amount of potential and I'm sure if we have this podcast again in a few years, we'd say, well look at these new use cases now that have been proven out. And I'm super excited about the future.
Matt:
Absolutely. And those human impacts are definitely very cool. So thank you for sharing that. And we'll have y'all back for hopefully season two wayfinding and the future for RTLS part two. So thank you all very, very much for your insights, your expertise, and your perspective on this topic. As mentioned, it’s only become more relevant, more sophisticated, and definitely more exciting and impactful. And as always, an even bigger thank you to you, our listeners for joining us for this episode. We really do enjoy creating this podcast, getting great sound bites, getting to talk shop, and really share those, details and information with you. So thank you. And we really hope that you enjoy listening as well. Now, while you're with us, shameless plug, please be sure to subscribe to HID Connects. Doing so will ensure that you stay posted on all new episodes as soon as they become available. And of course, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And in the spirit of connection, please connect with me. Feel free to drop me a line with questions, topic ideas, or anything around future episodes and feedback. Just drop me a line at [email protected]. So until our next episode, thanks again to our guests and thanks again for you for listening. May your identities forever be secure.