Debbie Greenway & Caryn Mills on the FEIG ELECTRONIC Inc. & HID Global Partnership

Executive Vice President of FEIG ELECTRONICS Inc., Debbie Greenway, and Caryn Mills, Medical Device Sales Director at HID Global, come together to discuss how FEIG and HID work together, how their technologies work together, and what makes them so vital to the success of MedTech devices.

Feig Electronics, a leading manufacturer of high-quality RFID products and reader systems, and HID Global, one of the world’s leading RFID manufacturers, have found themselves in a mutually beneficial partnership, providing cutting-edge RFID solutions to the medical device industry, among a wide array of others.

HID prides itself on securely identifying people, places, and things. They are known for both off-the-shelf standard RFID tags as well as their ability to custom design any form factor or frequency needed by customers, making them a versatile, reliable partner and one that FEIG ELECTRONICS feels comfortable and confident in recommending in conjunction with their healthcare products in an ever-evolving and growing medical device industry.

“I can very confidently say, ‘Here’s the company you want to get the tags from,’’ explains Debbie. “Caryn is on it right away. She ensures the customer has samples and all the support they need, but also that they have a wide variety, which is important because customers have all kinds of different needs, their companies have many different strategies, and the devices themselves go through different life cycles. HID can provide solutions to meet all of these demands.

“It’s incredibly beneficial for them to be able to go to a supplier,” she adds, “and then, later on, say, ‘All right, we’re going to start putting this disposable device through the sterilization process.’ All of a sudden, they need a different tag that is capable of withstanding those elements and temperatures. Now they don’t have to start all over again; they can just call Caryn, who they already know, and get the kind of tag they need.

“When I’m done at the end of the process, I sleep soundly at night, knowing I’m not going to get a call from an unhappy customer sometime later.”

“We work with many of the leading companies out there,” Caryn explains, “and can assist with everything from asset tracking of medical devices to inventory management, distribution, supply chain, authentication, brand identification, anti-counterfeiting, overall inventory management of devices, tracking lifecycles, and counting sterilizations. Medical devices, such as robotic devices that utilize RFID, can also benefit from auto-calibrating and the elimination of human error.”

“There’s also a lot of new technology that’s recently come out,” she adds, “as far as withstanding not only autoclaving but gamma sterilization. We can provide specific tags for that or any harsh environment or temperature. For example, we have tags that can go through cryogenic temperatures. Think about fertility clinics or blood management. You want to know where your specimen is and how it’s being handled. We have technologies for that.”

“They’ve tested our readers, and we’ve tested their tags; it’s a great solution,” Debbie boasts. “They have really excellent quality tags. The customers are never going to have a problem with their RFID system if they use HID tags.”

Since their shared realization of a mutually beneficial partnership, FEIG and HID have begun approaching the market together.

“We’ve been able to visit customers together,” Debbie shares. “It’s nice, I think, for the customers as well. I’m just the readers and the antennas; now they don’t have to go find their own tag or have another meeting with another company to try to find the right tags. We’re both right there. We can provide the whole solution except for the software, but we do have a lot of SDKs and software help, along with tons of partners between the two of us who can integrate the RFID output into just about anything. I’ve never seen a system, we couldn’t find an integrator to integrate with.”

Not only do Debbie and Caryn find benefit presenting a unified front to companies and customers, but they also enjoy attending trade shows together. You can find FEIG ELECTRONICS Inc. and HID Global side by side at MD&M West, February 7th-9th, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. Be sure to visit them in Hall E at booths 706 and 607 to learn more about their RFID solutions!

“This started as a business partnership,” Debbie recalls. “We saw an excellent fit between our two companies in many ways, including the business style, the strategy, the focus on quality and robustness, and the wide variety of product offerings. But as we got to work on it, we ended up laughing a lot, enjoying each other a lot, and having a lot of fun. It’s, I think, the best kind of partnership.”