Post #3: Tracking and Tracing Technologies

As CTO of LEMON Mobile Inc, a location-based messaging and loyalty platform for events that tied event owners and sponsors to fans during the event. We anonymously “tracked” people (with their permission of course) using a number of technologies such as GPS, WIFI, BLE Beacons and even inaudible sounds.

"having a “closed loop” system that tracks everything from production to sale is required to stop cross-border leakage."

We have deployed our technology at many high-end events across the US and Europe culminating in supporting one of our largest mobile deployments --  The 2015 Rugby World Cup when we were tracked and messaged 2.5million people.

Data visualization of fans arriving at Twickenham Stadium during the 2015 Rugby World Cup. When data collection matures in the cannabis industry, marketers and producers will be able to grow according to their customer's preferences. 

We collected a ton of data and stored it in the cloud and we used it to help event organizers understand their audience: where they resided, what teams they followed, and other attributes which helped us to deliver the relevant message to the right visitor.

Cannabis now needs to be traced and tracked. This is a stipulation the Canadian Ministry of Health as well as every State were cannabis legal in one form or another. There are lots of ways to do this; from low tech, hand-written labels to high tech scannable barcodes, embedded RFID chips and even BLE (blue tooth low energy) beacons attached to their stems to track and trace the plant’s life. These plants are valuable assets and producers don’t want them going walk-about. But also, the ministry wants to know exactly where every plant is, whether it is healthy and if it is not, what was done with it.

Metrc (https://www.metrc.com) is considered a gold standard in cannabis tracking. As the main seed-to-sale platform for Colorado, Metrc considers tracking to be one of the most important aspects of their software. This is due partially to the fact that States have different cannabis laws and having a “closed loop” system that tracks everything from production to sale is required to stop cross-border leakage.

“By the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology combined with serialized item tracking, the system creates an "end to end" surveillance system where the municipality has real-time visibility at any given time into the "inventory" at all the locations (does not rely on audits for tracking)” (https://www.metrc.com/the-system)

RFID is just a little chip that broadcasts a unique identifier: a unique number to that plant. A "reader" is used to log the plant and then the grower is able to make notes assigned to that number. Here is Metrc's whitepaper on RFID and the cannabis industry. 

More to come on tracking and tracing technologies.