Verichip, the Delray Beach, FL-based maker of RFID chips, plans to raise as much as $45.8 million in an IPO in the second quarter. The company estimates the potential market for its implants to be as large as 45 million patients. Verichip is the only company to have won FDA approval to market a RFID product for human patients. The chip maker is a unit of Applied Digital Solutions, a security specialist. To date, relatively few patients in the U.S. have elected to get the implants, in part due to privacy concerns. RFID technology is far more prevalent in the livestock industry, where it is used to track animals.
- see this article from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req)