Medical ID tags, no matter what form they take, are looked for as part of standard practice by emergency responders and medical personnel.  By alerting doctors and first responders to conditions such as allergy sensitivity, blood group and medications being taken, much time can be saved and there is no doubt that lives have been saved because of the information contained on such identification tags.

Medical identification tags are suitable for many more people than those with an allergy or a condition such as diabetes, in fact there are many more instances where medical personnel need to be alerted and can be easily enough.

If a patient has any of the following, a medical identification tag will assist in identifying both the patient and more importantly, the condition which they suffer from:

• Alzheimer’s Disease
• Atrial Fibrillation
• Diabetes (type 1 and 2)
• Angina
• Low Blood Pressure
• Arrhythmias
• Pacemakers
• Surgical issues e.g. heart surgery, cancer treatment
• Transplant
• Epilepsy
• Medicine Use (especially where multiple prescriptions are being taken)
• High Blood Pressure
• Benign Intracranial Hypertension
• Hypertension
• Low Blood Pressure
• Allergy information

Once a medical responder understands you suffer from a set of conditions or are taking a particular type of medication, treatment options can be much more rapidly assessed.  Vitally, avoiding some treatment regimes is essential for certain types of patient – if a patient is recovering or taking medication as a consequence of a heart condition, then certain standard drugs for pain control must be avoided or else there is serious risk to life.

Medical identification tags are also becoming more “intelligent” – the obvious development with tags was to include patient identifiers such as name, address and next of kin, but with advances in technology, a new generation of smart tags are under development.  Using microchips, much more information can be stored and indeed, there is no practical or theoretical limit to the amount of information which can be stored in this way.

Imagine a scenario where an unconscious individual is admitted to an ER facility, and while the patient is as yet unknown, the medical identification tag contains a chip which holds a copy of the patient’s medical records.  By using the appropriate reader, medical responders can access the entire medical history of the individual including such ancillary information as insurance coverage so they know the bill will be settled prior to treatment being provided!  It has not been unknown for essential treatment to be withheld or delivered after considerable delay while such administrative issues have waited to be resolved – cold comfort to you if you are the patient in this instance.

Development of medical identification tags is flowing into other identification and tracking areas.  RFID technology for instance, has been used for some time to track moveable assets, but the application to people has been discouraged in many instances because of the threat to civil liberties. So far, application has been restricted to those prisoners who are sentenced to house arrest but there are obvious medical applications for those who suffer from dementia for instance.

One thing is clear, the days of a simple metal tag with a blood group imprinted upon it have become numbered – the days of the smart medical tag are almost upon us.

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Inkjet printers squirt small, high pressure jets of ink onto the paper when printing (hence the name “inkjet”) and this must then be allowed to dry – when you print a heavy ink piece off, particularly a photo or other image, you will feel the paper is heavy and wet and the image printed will smudge easily if you don’t handle it properly.

A laser printer uses a laser which creates an electrically charged image on a rotating drum and which is then used with the toner to create an image or text on the paper using heat to melt or fuse the ink with it.

There are pro’s and con’s to using both types of printer but here is a brief summary:

Inkjet Pro’s and Con’s

The advantages for using an ink jet printer for your custom ink jet labels are:

• Vivid colors are created with inkjets
• Most inkjet printers are easily within everyone’s budget and they are very affordable
• Very suitable for occasional use at home or in the business
• Can create photo quality images

But here are the downsides:

• Frequent ink cartridge replacement will drive up the regular operating cost
• High maintenance costs relative to laser printers
• Print slowly compared to a laser

In the other corner we have the laser printer labels and the advantages here are:

• Lower operating costs
• Toner cartridges have a longer life than inkjet cartridges
• Sharp text quality
• Fast printing speeds

But the downsides are:

• Usually much more expensive to buy upfront
• Occasionally, images and photographs are not so clearly printed
• Toner cartridges can be much more expensive than inkjet cartridges

Occasional home or business use favors using an inkjet printer and especially if you are printing images and photo reproduction whereas if you are looking for a regular use, high volume capability then you are better off investing in the laser printer.

There are a wealth of internet sites offering personalization services for wine for special occasions such as weddings and holiday celebrations but what is also remarkably ignored, are the services available to personalize any bottle and not just a fancy wine bottle either – think soda for instance!

Personalizing your own custom wine label does require a good idea of what will work and what does not – personalization is a double edged sword which can easily lead to a presentation disaster no matter how good the wine inside actually is.  The wine label for many is a certain symbol of the quality of the bottle which is why wine producers and distributors spend so much time and effort on creating a good looking bottle and label in the first place.

Check out the printing service offered and ensure that they provide help with the label design before you plunge into the personalization process.  Many internet suppliers do little more than provide templates which are bland and uninspiring and certainly nothing in the form of custom designs to suit your own particular requirements; this results in many wine and champagne bottles looking like cast off prizes from a cheap fairground instead of the bespoke and customized entertaining experience that a good label will produce.

You should also look for help in selecting your wines; this is where the really good wine label suppliers will stand out from those who are simply dabbling in the market – personalization means putting something of yourself into the end product and this creates an opportunity to demonstrate taste and something unique however, it is also an opportunity to get it completely wrong which will equally reflect upon you.

Make sure you select a supplier who is able to help you at all stages of the personalization and design process including helping you with your wine selection too.

Cheap labels now allow you to organize everything from your garage and tool shed, through to your home possessions for security purposes as well as the more traditional uses such as marking school books and sports kit so the kids do not permanently lose stuff when they forget it.

Across the board, every type of label has fallen dramatically in price.

Heavy duty all-weather Nalgene laminated tags now cost as little as their indoor equivalents used to mark items in your kitchen; marking up personal possessions with a permanent adhesive tag is one of the best ways of ensuring you get your possessions returned if they are stolen and this will cost a few dollars at most to do; marking your belongings no matter what or where they are is a mark of your ownership and possession so things do not get permanently mislaid and the only real investment you have to make is a little time to get the job of labeling done; in dollar terms it is a few bucks and no more.

You can find cheap label suppliers across the internet but with low cost you must be careful of the quality you are receiving.  Many low cost labels are produced in the Far East and particularly China, where highly toxic inks and manufacturing processes destroy the environment while the quality of the label material itself may leave a lot to be desired.  This said, there is no shortage of homegrown label producers right here in the US where standards are higher and despite producing cheap products you can easily afford, buying US labels keeps US jobs right here at home.

Typical waterproof labels will be able to resist the effects of water for several days, weeks or indeed permanently depending on the adhesive used and how well it has been applied.  In fact, most waterproof labels will be able to withstand the impact of water long after the ink has faded on the label so in practice it becomes a moot issue.

If you are looking for waterproof labels to mark the kids sports kit then a standard label is going to be able to do the job, but it is probably better if you use a heat activated iron-on label or even better for extra durability, a sew on label which will be unaffected by water.

The ink used to mark the label will be the next consideration and indeed, it is likely that the water or weather is going to affect the ink on the label far sooner than they will affect the adhesive or fixing material.  Most ink used is water soluble, in fact if you are looking to ensure minimal impact upon the environment, a water soluble ink will be recommended due to the toxicity of traditional durable inks and their manufacturing process.

There are two main methods for water and weatherproofing a label – the use of special microfiber material which traps the water -soluble ink applied and the use of a laminate coating to protect the label image after it has been applied.  Microfiber printing material acts in a similar fashion to your cotton shirt when you spill orange juice on it – the fibers trap the juice and it is difficult to remove without a thorough clean.  The ink is trapped by the microfiber and this retains the image applied despite the presence of water, however over time the image will fade and deteriorate so this method is not recommended for heavy exposure.

Laminating the image after it has been applied provides all round protection both for the ink and the material making up the tag; a coating such as Nalgene will ensure that the label is preserved for as long as is necessary and how heavy the application will determine whether the tag becomes weatherproof as opposed to simply waterproof.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The end of the year School Picnic is something that both students and teachers look forward to. The parents supply the picnic and everyone has a great time at Greene Hollows Elementary School. With three legged races and other fun picnic games, it’s a day of old-fashioned fun that has been taking place for years.

This year the parents group decided that each child would receive a boxed lunch to enjoy instead of doing a buffet style lunch. The buffet style lunch was too hard to organize and box lunches would be easier to distribute and more of a picnic style meal. The class would all eat chicken salad sandwiches, an apple and a small container of potato chips and a container of milk.

One mother was concerned that the lunches would be easy to open in a simple box. That they should be sealed in some way. Another mother suggested getting personalized labels as part of the fun, making the event look more special. Getting labels that said “Greene Hollows Annual Picnic” meant that everyone was reminded these lunches were especially for this time. It was just another way to add to the celebration. One mom was worried about the expense of these personalized labels but ordering full color personalized labels in a batch was quite reasonable. It was far less expensive than ordering the potato chips or even the napkins for the lunches themselves! So it was decided: the personalized labels were a “go.”

Some mothers were given the assignment of making sandwiches, others to buy apples and others to put lunches together. But everyone had to agree that the labels added something great to these picnic lunches. They made the picnic lunch for the school look as if it was catered by a fancy place instead of done by the parents group for the school. The mothers thought that was pretty funny, as there would be no way they could put a caterer in the budget.

The day of the annual picnic was wonderful. It was sunny with just a touch of breeze. All of the kids wore their play clothes, shorts and tee shirts. There was lots of laughing and playing. It was a school day without any schoolwork. It was the perfect day to thank the teachers for their hard work and to celebrate the end of the year. With barely a month of school left, it was nice to take the time to gather together as a school and enjoy some time with each other.

The teachers were especially impressed with the boxed lunches. They thought they looked very fancy and pretty. The full color sticker had flowers and a wildcat, the school’s mascot on it. The kids enjoyed their lunches and had fun playing with each other.

Many moms decided they would use personalized labels for other events in their lives as they added that special touch. With children going off to summer camp, there would be many reasons to use personalized labels with them. With vacations coming up there would be many reasons to use personalized labels to pack and organize things. With family reunions this summer, there were so many great ideas bubbling up about how to use personalized labels. These personalized labels – all budget friendly and so pretty – seemed to make things easier and simpler. Best of all they added a special touch to any event, just what every hostess desires!

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Take look at some of the law enforcement statistics regarding lost and stolen property:

• a tagged item is 37 times more likely to be returned to the owner than an untagged one;
• 92% of crimes involving stolen property result in a conviction as a direct result of tagged items being found in the possession of the criminal involved;
• a tagged pet is returned to owner 90% of the time while an untagged one less than 10% of the time
• more than 80% of convicted thieves surveyed have responded that they are deterred by tagging of property;
• 100% of convicted thieves surveyed responded they would choose to steal from an untagged property than one where tagging was practised; and
• tagging is estimated to save $17 billion annually in insurance costs due to reduced payouts and premiums for policyholders.

Image via Wikipedia

Over 90% of pets are tagged in the United States and this is the major reason why so many pets are returned to their owners but there is a starkly contrasting statistic when it comes to our children; less than 2% have some form of identification upon  them!

Fortunately, the overwhelmingly vast majority of missing children are located and very quickly with the bulk of cases of missing children resulting from losing a child at the store or fair through to more involved family squabbles and disputes.  Children are generally not exposed to a significantly higher risk of coming to harm in such cases but the impact upon parents and guardians cannot be underestimated and this is vastly increased for the child in question.

Locating a missing child and reuniting them with their family is an urgent and desperate necessity and yet so many children have nothing to identify them, not even a telephone number for home.

Identity bracelets provide a convenient and secure method of ensuring your child can be identified and more importantly has contact information for you or whoever is caring for the child in question.  Many identification kits are available as part of a package of missing child prevention programs run in tandem with government agencies and voluntary organizations.  Identifying your child and getting in contact with the parents is only part of the equation when it comes to reuniting a child with their family; children who have medical conditions for instance requiring regular or sporadic intervention such as diabetes or epilepsy can be carried at all times.

Fortunately, ensuring your child can be identified and you can be contacted immediately they are located is something that you are not likely to need in practice.  Missing children are a common feature in our psyche simply because of the huge apparatus that exists to locate missing children when this emotional and traumatic incident occurs, however it is a rare occurrence that does not affect most children while growing up though the concern is whether it will be our own child who is lost or missing next.

Post provided by Maverick Label, a custom labels printing company

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RFID has far more constructive uses than just making sure a crook sticks to a curfew. RFID tags are used to track containers and shipments even down to the individual parcel in certain cases, but the technology has recently been enjoying new application.

Wells Fargo has the job of tracking thousands of laptops from hundreds of locations and knowing when one can leave a location and who ought to have possession of it has been a security nightmare.  Using RFID, each laptop has been implanted with a tag which has upon it the information necessary to automatically detect whether it can in fact leave their offices and in who’s possession it ought to be.  More than this, in the event of a lost or stolen laptop, RFID can be employed to track the location of the device in order to recover it.

Though the concept behind RFID is simple, the technology required is in fact extremely complex.  In this instance, complex technology does mean high cost for individual readers and tags and the price tag for most RFID solutions is beyond the budget of individual customers when insurance and ensuring back-up procedures are so much more cost effective.  An RFID kit from Tiktag will probably cost in the region of $190 yet insuring the laptop against loss of theft will cost a fraction of that amount.

RFID technology is not limited to tracking assets and determining the location of missing items for big companies with car tracking technology having been around for over a decade and the benefit certainly outweighs the cost in such instances.  When it comes to smaller, portable devices such as laptops, smart phones and personal items the cost effective technology for RFID tagging for personal use is still some distance away.

Article provided by MaverickLabel.com, a good source for custom property ID labels & RIFD labels.

Vein mapping provides for a more sophisticated and secure proprietary identification solution than finger printing security using the intricate network of veins under the skin of the palm of your hand.  This provides a far more unique security biometric that is itself more secure.  Finger prints can be replicated by taking copies off of objects touched by the target; making a replica becomes a simple process that anyone who watches CSI on a regular basis will be familiar with.  The vein map is however not so easily copied as it requires the palm of the targets hand to be physically scanned and mapped in order to obtain the necessary biometric data required to get past security.

The application for vein mapping extends beyond door locks with Fujitsu and Hitachi both offering solutions which are used for desktop and laptop security.  Both companies have developed infra red technology which upon scanning ensures the energy is absorbed by the blood and thus reveals the pattern of veins within the hand.  This pattern is then scanned and digitized before being stored as the template for comparison with the real palm vein pattern when it is scanned by an access reader securing the physical asset whether it be access to a building, machinery or computer.

Article provided by MaverickLabel.com, a reliable source for personalized ID labels.

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