NHS TEST: Several PCTs are trialling O2's NFC-based Homecare system, which offers patient benefits as well as monitoring carer attendance

A new NFC-based home care monitoring solution developed by mobile operator O2 in conjunction with Reslink, an established Finnish supplier of NFC-based workforce management solutions, is now on trial with several National Health Service customers in the UK.

O2 Homecare is aimed at the NHS' regional Primary Care Trusts — responsible for running local medical services — and related care organisations and is designed to help domiciliary care workers and patients access and share information.

O2 and Reslink are working with EcoTech, a provider of sustainable homes, to incorporate NFC tags as standard into their energy efficient housing.

Using O2 Homecare, carers can download patient records and care requirements by swiping their NFC-enabled handset over NFC tags installed in the patient's home. The solution also captures real-time information on care provided to the patient and logs the care workers' whereabouts when making house calls for enhanced security and compliance. Data is relayed to central host systems and logged for electronic time and attendance records, eliminating the need for verbal or paper documentation and helping to save care organisations time and operational expense.

O2 Homecare patients need only touch their mobile phone to the NFC tag installed in their home to bring up details of their care worker's next visit or their next medical appointment. Call backs and appointments can also be requested quickly and easily by touching the patient's phone to an NFC tag. The patient can then select their preferred options from a drop down menu which appears on the handset.

Alert tags can also be strategically placed within easy reach of the patient in case of emergency. When the patient touches their mobile phone to this tag the handset will automatically initiate and alert transaction and dial a predetermined number.

NFC tags can also be placed on medicine bottles, allowing patients to identify prescription details by touching their phone to the bottle. The tag may be linked to a special medication dispenser with a pre-set release capability and authorisation procedures based on the patient's prescription.

In addition, NFC tags may be placed on equipment in the home, such as the hot water and heating system, the thermostat, the oven or a chairlift. The patient would then simply touch their phone to the tag to bring up details such as the model type, when the product was last serviced and by whom. The patient can also report a fault with the equipment or request a service appointment using their handset.

"The development of an NFC-based home care solution shows the real in-roads we are making in the health sector," says Ben Dowd, O2's business sales director. "We know our customers don't want a one-size-fits-all mobile communications package and this demonstrates how well new technology can benefit both workers and patients in the health sector."

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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UNDERSTANDING: The NFC Forum and ETSI will 'align their activities to help the NFC community to implement solutions that comply with specs developed by both organisations'

The NFC Forum has signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Under the terms of the agreement, the NFC Forum and ETSI will "align their activities to help the NFC community to implement solutions that comply with NFC-related specifications developed by both organisations," says the NFC Forum.

ETSI develops globally-applicable IT standards for smart cards for mobile communications and other applications, standards for close range inductive data communications, for a variety of short range devices and for a range of other technologies.

As the two organisations continue to work towards the release of additional NFC-related specifications, the new agreement means they will coordinate their activities related to testing and product certification. The agreement will also enable the two organisations to exchange questions and answers regarding each other's work and to better coordinate future endeavours.

"The work of the two organisations intersects at the point where specifications and standards development come together," the organisations say. "The agreement ensures a high level of alignment between the two organisations."

"When industry associations work hand-in-hand with standards bodies, it assures solutions providers that their products and services will reach the broadest possible market and work effectively around the world," says the NFC Forum chairman Koichi Tagawa. "ETSI is one of the world's premier standards bodies and we are pleased to partner with them."

"ETSI is committed to ensure global interoperability and avoid duplication of work," added ETSI's director-general, Walter Weigel. "Hence, I am very happy about this MoU with the NFC Forum and I am confident that this collaboration will lead to many benefits for the industry and end users."

Awards finalists

The NFC Forum has also announced the 20 finalists for its NFC Forum Global Competition 2009. In all, 52 contestants submitted entries from across the globe, representing 21 countries and four continents.

The ten finalists in the commercial track, competing for €5,000 and the title of "The Best NFC Service of the Year 2009" are:

• Collis (Netherlands): ING NFC mobile payment product
• Horatio and Audiantes GmbH (Germany): NFC mobile live help
• Interactive Research & Development (Pakistan): Interactive alerts for childhood pneumonia
• Nexperts (Austria): NFC-based gift voucher system
• Nordea (Finland): NFC-based strong end-user authentication solution for online banking
• Precise Biometrics (Sweden): BioXpress
• Reslink Solutions (Finland): Reslink mobile NFC client builder, 'the NFC enabler'
• Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (Germany): RMVmobil — The NFC-based customised mobile portal
• Sabre Technologies (Sri Lanka): Customer intimacy with NFC
• Servtag (Germany): Friendticker.com — An NFC location-based mobile social ticker

The ten finalists in the Research Track, competing for €5,000 and the title of "The Most Innovative NFC Research Project of the Year 2009" are:

• ETH Zürich (Switzerland): APriori — An NFC-based product rating system
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA): Eclectyk (video)
• Technische Universität München (Germany): NFaCebook, NFC-based Facebook profile matching in the hybrid space
• Université Joseph Fourier Grenoble (France): EasyRide, an ecological, ethical and social ride-sharing NFC-enabled system
• Univerza v Ljubljani, Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Slovenia): Touch to communicate (English translation)
• University of Oulu (Finland): Touch & Learn — An NFC-based application for language learning
• University of Oulu (Finland): Touch & Collect — Collecting multimedia content from museums
• University of Oulu (Finland): Touch & Control — Controlling public displays by touching RFID tags
• VTT Technical Research Centre (Finland): Hot in the city
• VTT Technical Research Centre (Finland): UBITEMS — Ubiquitous temperature measurements with NFC-compatible batteryless sensor tags

"This year's submissions prove that the true power of a technology can best be measured by its success in enabling new innovations," says the NFC Forum's Koichi Tagawa. "We at the NFC Forum are pleased to see that our finalists include many imaginative new NFC solutions for everything from location-based social networking to language learning, and from secure airline travel services to online banking authentication."

Each of the finalists will give a presentation and live demonstration in a demo space at the WIMA NFC Developers Summit in Monaco on April 23.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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GROWING LIST: Reslink has appointed resellers in the UK and Hong Kong

Two more companies have been added to the growing list of resellers of Reslink Solutions' NFC-based workforce management solutions: Business Acuity in the UK and Datricity in Hong Kong.

Reslink uses NFC phones and RFID tags to enable businesses to identify exactly where their employees went, at what time, and what they did whilst they were there. Application areas targeted include time & attendance, field service management, asset management, security guarding, contract cleaning and domiciliary homecare.

Customers include Rentokil Initial's washroom services division in Sweden, which is using the Reslink system to keep tight control of its field services agents' activities and to gather additional business information in the field, and Palmia, the city of Helsinki's facilities management company.

Business Acuity, based in the south of England, specializes in mobile solutions and website design for clients in the contract cleaning, homecare, security and general time & attendance sectors. In Hong Kong, Datricity provides internet and mobile workforce management solutions, particularly for the security sector.

The two new resellers join the four UK firms who have already signed up with Reslink this year. They are:

• CM2000, a leading UK provider of solutions and services for care monitoring, call monitoring, homecare monitoring and lone worker safety with more than 130 customers across the UK.
• Expolink, a workforce management and mobile data collection solutions provider to major facilities management and contract cleaning companies in both the public and private sector. Expolink clients include over a third of all hospitals and many small, medium and large corporate businesses throughout the UK.
• Mobile Communications 2000, a specialist in mobile telecommunications solutions for proof-of-attendance and location-sensitive data capture using mobile phones.
• Mobile-e-Solutions, a mobile proof-of-attendance and data collection specialist working with care homes and security companies.

The RFID Discovery Lab at Newham College in London has also installed a Reslink system and is providing consultancy, training and demonstrations on new RFID-related technologies, including Reslink.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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