The NFC Forum has launched a dedicated Healthcare Special Interest Group, its first sector-specific push into medical devices, pharmaceutical packaging and connected care. In the first of our RFID News interviews, we put five questions to the group’s chair on why healthcare needs NFC now, the US$30.5 billion counterfeit medicine problem, and why standards will decide whether connected healthcare actually works.
Stefan Genser
Chair of the NFC Forum Healthcare Special Interest Group and Director of Sales at Identiv. The Healthcare SIG brings NFC Forum members together to standardise how NFC is used across medical devices, pharmaceuticals and healthcare delivery.
Why is now the right time for the NFC Forum to launch a dedicated Healthcare Special Interest Group?
As society has become more digital, expectations have risen for seamless, contactless experiences across every aspect of daily life. Digital transformation has reshaped how people access and interact with essential services, and healthcare is no exception. The adoption of digital technologies has accelerated, with electronic health records, digital health consultations, remote patient monitoring and wearable health devices used to improve accessibility, efficiency and create a more connected and streamlined patient experience. The vast majority of us also now have an NFC-enabled smartphone in our pockets, making these multiple different applications across healthcare possible with a single tap.
More connected devices, systems and patient touchpoints have their benefits, but can also create challenges around privacy, security and trust. At NFC Forum, we understand the importance of global standardization to enhance user experiences without compromising on patient safety. As such, the Forum decided to launch the Healthcare Special Interest Group (SIG) to promote the safe and effective use of NFC technologies within the sector, enabling safer, better-quality care in applications such as medical devices, pharmaceutical packaging, and healthcare delivery systems.
“The vast majority of us now have an NFC-enabled smartphone in our pockets, making these applications across healthcare possible with a single tap.”
What are the biggest opportunities for NFC across the healthcare sector?
The healthcare sector is increasingly focused on delivering connected, patient-centric experiences and NFC technology is helping to enable this transformation.
Organizations are exploring how NFC can be used to simplify patient identification, track equipment, support easy and secure access to digital health information via NFC’s “tap” functionality, and how to authenticate, set up and manage medical devices. By streamlining routine clinical tasks, NFC reduces the administrative burden on healthcare staff, allowing them to focus more time on patient care than manual data and equipment management. In addition, contactless NFC interactions offer a more hygienic alternative to paper-based or shared-touch processes, which is particularly valuable in clinical environments.
What role does it play in the pharmaceutical industry?
NFC supports the pharmaceutical industry by improving safety, efficiency, and patient engagement across the medication lifecycle. One of its key benefits is strengthening anti-counterfeit protection. Counterfeit and falsified medical products are a significant global issue impacting millions of patients, with an estimated US$30.5 billion spent per year on substandard and falsified medical products. By embedding NFC tags into pharmaceutical packaging, each product can be authenticated at multiple points in the supply chain. This makes it significantly harder for counterfeit medicine to enter the market, providing greater assurance of product integrity from manufacturer to patient. Manufacturers, distributors, and healthcare providers can also track products more accurately and in real time, reducing errors, improving stock control, supporting regulatory compliance, and streamlining administrative processes within pharmacies, hospitals, and logistics operations.
US$30.5 billionestimated global spend per year on substandard and falsified medical products
For patients, NFC-enabled packaging can support medication adherence programs, providing instant access to dosage instructions, product information, and safety guidance using technology already integrated into users’ smartphones. With this information instantly accessible, they can engage more actively and confidently with medication management, ultimately supporting better patient outcomes.
What role will the Healthcare Special Interest Group play within the healthcare ecosystem?
The Healthcare SIG brings together experts from across the NFC Forum membership, fostering collaboration across the NFC and healthcare ecosystems to standardize and strengthen the role of NFC technology within the sector.
The group will address critical aspects of NFC enablement, such as cybersecurity and regulatory alignment; creating and validating new NFC use cases; and defining the technical basis for interoperability across the NFC Forum ecosystem. We will explore how existing NFC Forum Standards can be used, adapted and evolved, where necessary, to meet the needs of the healthcare sector and enable reliable, intentional and secure device-to-device connections.
Why are standards so important for the future of connected healthcare?
Connected healthcare relies on trust, interoperability and consistency. Whether it’s a patient tapping their medicine bottle to access dosage information, a clinician using NFC-enabled devices in a hospital, or a pharmacist authenticating medication, every interaction needs to work reliably across different devices, operating systems and healthcare environments. The use of standards helps to avoid a fragmented ecosystem where solutions cannot interact seamlessly, and the user experience is interrupted.
This is where NFC Forum comes in, developing and maintaining its specifications to help companies build solutions that are secure, interoperable and deliver a consistent user experience. The launch of the NFC Forum Healthcare SIG will focus efforts on sector-specific requirements, ensuring that NFC Forum standards continue to evolve to meet industry needs and support the development of trusted NFC solutions across the healthcare sector.
More RFID News interviews
We are putting the people shaping RFID, NFC and AutoID on the record. If you would like to take part, or want to nominate someone we should speak to, email [email protected]. More on the NFC Forum Healthcare SIG at nfc-forum.org.
