Smartrac partners with Suku to authenticate Covid-19 test kits

By equipping Covid-19 test kits and PPE with Smartrac’s Circumstm NFC tags, the technology utilizes Avery Dennison’s Digital Identity Platform to feed tag data to Suku’s blockchain-based supply chain application. The data from the mobile engagement then confirm the authenticity and provenance of the tagged product, reassuring customers and ultimately increasing trust. Customers can also view their purchase price of PPE compared to the global average, providing transparency to help in the fight against price gouging.

The test kit technology allows organizations to access real-time data from test kit results to make informed decisions on the allocation of doctors, facilities and resources. By opening a communication channel with healthcare officials, this technology will also provide patients with guidance on appropriate behavior in case of a positive test result.

‘By combining Avery Dennison’s Digital Identity Platform and Smartrac’s NFC technology with Suku, we are enabling true transparency for users of Covid-19 testing kits and PPE. Pairing each physical item with a unique digital identity enables visibility of where the items are being distributed, helping healthcare providers, governments and consumers make better, faster decisions based on access to real-time data,’ said Francisco Melo, vice president and general manager of Avery Dennison Intelligent Labels.

This technology is among the latest contributions from Avery Dennison companies globally, which are leading efforts across the supply chain to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic with advanced product innovation and increased manufacturing capacity, especially for essential medical and health-related products.

‘As providers around the world are working to quickly expand the availability of PPE and tests for Covid-19, it's important to build technology that's easy to adopt. Our goal is to offer a simple solution that doesn't require complex systems integration, providing the right transparency, provenance, supply availability, and real-time data needed using NFC tags enabled by the Suku blockchain,’ added Yonathan Lapchik, CEO of Suku.

High performance is essential to ensuring read reliability of the tag throughout the supply chain. Smartrac’s CIRCUS inlays and tags with NXP’s NTAG213 chip are designed to suit applications where small size and high performance are critical. They offer 144 bytes of user memory and come with a unique ID (UID) mirror functionality, which enables the chip serial number to be mirrored as part of its encoded URL address. This feature allows every tag to be seen and read as unique from the application perspective, without requiring users to encode inlays with different numbers.