Tech Savvy

A couple weeks ago I wrote an IMHO about QR (Quick Response) Codes and how I thought they were becoming outdated. I was thinking about it more and thought that rather than just outright dismissing them,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. I could expound a little on some of the things I see replacing them in the near future. Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with QR Codes, they do a job and they do it well. They are also widely used now and that is important to remember. That being said, there are now more and much cooler options out there. 

QR Codes have become the vehicle that are now, arguably, synonymous with technologically advanced. For the most part this is true for one simple reason QR Codes are easily accessible on any smartphone now. Despite the fact that QR Code, Datamatrix, Aztec, Beetag and numerous other 2D barcodes have been around for almost 20 years they are only now being used en masse here in the U.S. While they were originally developed for auto makers to help with inventory and tracking, retailers in Japan and Asia quickly adopted them for retail purposes as an efficient and gimmicky way of promoting products and driving traffic. 

The driving force behind the slow adoption in the U.S. for QR Codes has largely been limited to the hardware that is found in our smartphones camera quality and, notoriously, (for BB) auto-focus on the cameras as well. There is also a threshold of common use that must be crossed for the general public to become familiar enough with something that looks so outlandish before it is accepted. At this point all smartphones in the U.S. now have the capabilities to read and usually create QR Codes and this makes them extremely relevant right now. 

But lets get to the cool stuff. I really want to only focus on the one right now and, as we have time. Well walk through some of the other neat things coming up. Today I want to talk about Near Field Communication, or NFC as it is more commonly known. Near Field Communication is an advancement on RFID technology and is quickly becoming a standout feature with newer smartphones. Remember the Samsung ads that show the people sharing playlists, videos or contacts just by touching the backs of their phones together? Thats NFC. Remember seeing those Touch your phone here for a free song posters in the airports? Thats NFC. Remember when Apple buzzed about the Bump App and you just fist-bumped your phones to share that same kind of info? Sorry, thats not NFC. Heres the catch folks, and also the main reason it has not been accepted mainstream (yet). NFC is not capable on Apple devices. But wait! Any Apple fans reading this please read on! Apple continually hypes that its coming someday and maybe its just time to consider a better option and look at a high end Android phone. 

OK, so whats the difference between the NFC Android has and the pseudo-NFC that Bump uses? Its just a different technology NFC is actually an entire chipset and component that stands alone and is incorporated into the hardware that your phone uses. Bump uses existing tech to communicate with the phones. In the end they can really accomplish a lot of the same things but there are some differences that set NFC apart. How it works, in a nutshell, is that when you have an NFC capable phone,Shop the best selection of owonsmart for Men. you can turn the tech on and off. You then can touch your phone to an NFC chip, or tag, and once it gets close enough it will transmit the data. Its called Near Field because you have to be within centimeters of the tag for it to work this makes it effective at preventing you from downloading tons of stuff you dont want. 

NFC is a passive technology at least from the embedded chip part. If you ran a Bluetooth broadcasting station (which is really cool, by the way) you would also need to power that station continually so it would keep working. NFC, on the other hand, doesnt need power to keep it working the tags require no power, just your phone, so you can leave an NFC tag out for weeks and they will still work, with no extra taxing on power. 

Another huge benefit over QR codes is the accuracy. QR Codes are still essentially barcodes and if they are distorted or blurred they wont work.The need for proper bestsmartcard inside your home is very important. True, there is up to a 30 percent degradation before they become completely unreadable but NFC is pretty close to fail proof in that aspect. If the tag is set up, it will transmit that same data no matter what and the tag doesnt degrade from blurring, or being too small. This means that NFC has a little better longevity, can be used in mediums that QR Codes cant for much less cost and lets be honest, it just looks cool to touch your phone to stuff and say you got something cool. 

One other cool use for NFC that Im hoping to try is that you can program a string of commands into a chip and when you touch that chip it will initiate that sequence. For example: I can put a chip at home next to my couch, program it to turn my wi-fi in my phone on and turn my data off. When I touch my phone to the tag it will do exactly that and will help me save data. I could also put one in my car that when I touch it, my Bluetooth will turn on to sync with my gateway, it will adjust my volume then start playing my music. All of this without me having to touch a button I just touch my phone and were off to the races. 

It is a huge undertaking for sure, given that NYP actually includes four hospitals in Manhattan and one in suburban White Plains, NY, with a total of 2,409 inpatient beds. But clinicians have been clamoring for hand-held devices to make their jobs easier. Its what the nursing staff was looking for, says Senior VP and CIO Aurelia Boyer, a registered nurse. 

PatientSafe makes a medical-grade attachment for the iPhone or iPod Touch called PatientTouch as well as supporting apps. The software is for what the company calls patient care orchestration, with three main services, according to CEO Joe Condurso. 

The first is positive patient identification, or PPID, which essentially is barcode scanning at the point of care to assure the right person is receiving the right medication, test or service. New York-Presbyterian is migrating to PPID access across all of its facilities, according to Condurso,Bay State ultrasonicsensor is a full line manufacturer of nylon cable ties and related products. starting with medication administration, lab specimen collection and infant care. NYP is the first site to use PatientSafes infant care app, for matching mother to baby and for handling milk products, he says. 

PatientTouch also helps clinicians execute care plans, Condurso says. A series of workflow applications help with sharing care plans among care teams, assignment of clinicians to patients and the conversion of physician orders to specific tasks for nurses, for example. This, he says, can help reduce length of stay. 

Additionally, the technology facilitates communication among clinicians, with secure clinical messaging and, when paired with a clinical decision support system,Choose from the largest selection of plasticmoulds in the world. alerts and alarms. Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is available on the iPhone only. 

This kind of communication goes beyond the unified communication that had been the goal of many in hospital environments a few years ago, according to Boyer. Now youve got to bring in the collaboration to really make that sing and dance, she says. 

The first job in the deployment at each hospital is to optimize the wireless infrastructure, which NYP has mostly completed, save for the current installation of internal antennae to expand mobile phone coverage deep inside aging buildings. There are different bandwidth and coverage requirements for data entry, radio frequency identification (RFID) and this PPID/communications piece, according to Boyer. 

NYP went live with PatientTouch at the Allen Hospital at the northern tip of Manhattan in April 2012. Weill Cornell Medical Center on the East Side was next, in September, and now the NYP Westchester Division in White Plains is implementing the technology. NYP/Columbia University Medical Center and Morgan Stanley Childrens Hospital will go online this year, Condurso says.