RFID and alzhiemers

As RFID adds information to objects, it has always seemed to be a natural way to assist those with loss of memory. It seems to me a little bit oversold in this article but support for Alzhiemers patients, even if it is just by labeling their clothes is a natural way forward. Tunstall is a major player in the UK assisted living market, and this sort of approach may well add value. In fact it may be that the business model for a lot of these tools may come from the "hotel" and lifestyle side of the market rather than the purely clinical side. Certainly buying new technology that hasn't passed a clinical trial is much easier for individuals or companies than for public health organisations. Maybe this is really consumer-centric healthcare in action.

On an unrelated note, good to see 007 using RFID tagged banknotes to find the rather uninspiring villain in Quantum of Solace. Still waiting for the plotline where the rugged yet fiercly brilliant RFID researcher is the hero...

Korean news...

Just back from the APEC e-health technical forum site :http://apec.ehrc.re.kr/ some interesting work on patient identification in hospitals as well as other projects. Korea has identified RFID as a major area for development in the next 5 years (Korean Times story here ). Phone manufactures and network providers are also seeing potentil in m-health so convergence is possible. Professor Lee and the people from Yonsei University made us very welcome, hopefully this collaboration can continue.

RFID for mobile e-health for women

Somwhat of a bizzare title but reflecting the topic of a talk I'm giving at an APEC workshop. anyway news from RFID journal of a public health initiative in Dundee. Basically, Pregnant women have an ID card that gives access to welfare services. If they agree they go on a programme (Dundee Healthy Living Initiative) that measures CO in their breath, and hopefully identifies whether they have been smoking or not - this is a well-known technique . If not, they get vouchers for ASDA (a british supermarket). Apart from the obviuos joke potential, this is interesting in terms of the idea of attaching data to people, and the notion of being paid for loss of privacy. This sort of approach has been suggested in terms of internet search records, and of course happens every day with supermarket loyalty cards etc.

KORU club RFID and the Marathon

As the spouse of a Koru club member I get the chance to see how the other half lives. Recently she has recieved a small (1.5cm*1cm*2mm) sticky object to attach to her phone thatwill allow her to check -in to domestic flights by waving her phone at reader at a check-in kiosk. To me its interesting that they especially suggest sticking the tag to your phone - using the fact that mobiles are ubiquitous, without actually using the technology of the phone at all. I would be interested to know the success of this trial, in particular whether people who have koru club membership change their phone's too often to make it worthwhile.
Another ubiquitous use of RFID - The championchip RFID tag used at the Auckland marathon, added value in a number of ways - apart from giving an accurate line-crossing time (at both ends), it also also allowed the announcer to mention the names of people coming accross the finish line, as there was a reader pad around 50metres out. It also allowed video cameras to be queued to record your moment of glory/ relief. More importantly fo me it ensured the supply of a chair wher the volunteers allowed you to sit down while they removed it for you...

Cactus rustling

Somewhat bizzare story from IEEE Spectrum about using microchips - which I assume are RFID devices - to prevent theft of cactii. Interestingly, fish and animal tagging uses low frequency tags in most cases - eg products from Biomark.

NFC- what is it good for ?

A quick article in the NZ herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10536545) about the alcatel lucient NFC kit for home automation. The journalist (Simon Hendry) makes the point that there are no killer applications yet, and I tend to agree that home NFC - except perhaps for assisted living applications - seems a little like an application looking for a role. I'm fairly convinced that longer range RFID has the advantage even in the home as long as the system can handle the uncertainty caused by multiple objects and missed reads - one of the points made by the recent review in IEEE computer.

Sheng, Quan Z.; Li, Xue; Zeadally, Sherali, "Enabling Next-Generation RFID Applications: Solutions and Challenges," Computer , vol.41, no.9, pp.21-28, Sept. 2008
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623217&isnumber=4623205

Source of the name "AURA"

Despite being a relatively forced acronym (AUT RFID Applications), AURA is often used to describe the "active space" around an RFID user or tag. However, Aura was a titian goddess in greek mythology, who was turned into a breeze or possibly a stream after annoying Artemis. The story is here. There is a picture of a representation of her here.