Bluetooth, Hearables, IoT, Smart Energy and other random Stuff
Most technologies are born and either survive or die. UWB (Ultra Wide Band) seems determined to do it differently, by constantly reincarnating itself and never quite getting there. It’s currently at another inflection point in its serendipitous life cycle and it’s not at all obvious whether it will survive this one.
I was recently reading Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan
PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) – the group leading manufacturing automation connectivity standards, has announced that having completed an investigation of the different wireless options, they are moving forward with the Bluetooth standard for their radio technology.
The announcement is part of a growing chorus of acceptance for Bluetooth technology, as its maturity, robustness to interference and interoperability propels it into a diverse range of applications where reliability is critical.
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency recently published a strategy document on how they intend to connect with patients and public bodies. It’s an eminently sensible thing to do, and when they answered some questions about it they made the equally sensible comment that “these may include using social networking sites, blogs and text messages”. Rather that concentrating on the good sense of their strategy, that line generated the predictable knee jerk reaction from much of the medical press. Conservative as ever, they bridled at yet another attempt to let patients and carers take any part in managing their health. Instead of accepting that there might be something in the announcement, they preferred to puff and pontificate, raking up the standard old muck, such as the claim that 25%of GPs end up treating patients who have bought medicines over the Internet. You get the impression they’d rather prescribe us a sleeping draught than run the risk that we might spend a waking moment with a web browser.
It’s a shame that this reaction is still so prevalent. Social networks and the Internet will never be a replacement for medical care, but they have the ability to play a much greater role in how we live and manage disease. Everyone with an ounce of sense who has looked at the demographics knows that we cannot continue with the current model. We shouldn’t be pouring scorn on social networking, we should be looking carefully to see how it can help our healthcare experience evolve.
At the Bluetooth low energy preview day in Tokyo, a spokesman for Nokia reported an interesting statistic. Every year, 300,000 laptops are lost or left behind by passengers at U.S. airports. Apparently that’s greater than the number of mobile phones left at airports, suggesting that most travellers consider their phone to be more important than their laptop, but that’s another story. At first sight the figure seems staggering, but it’s only around one laptop per airport per day. What is staggering is the resulting cost of replacement, which equates to a third of a billion dollars every year.
The reason for raising this statistic is to point out one of the new applications which will be made possible by Bluetooth low energy. Bluetooth low energy (previously known as Wibree) is the new Bluetooth standard that is coming out this year and which enables devices to be produced which include a wireless link to transmit small amounts of data, and support a battery life that can extend into years. One of the first applications that will ship is access control or proximity detection. Which is why it can save the US economy $300,000,000 every year.
At a packed conference hall in Tokyo today, the Bluetooth SIG hosted the first public demonstrations of the new Bluetooth low energy standard to an audience of press and consumer electronics companies. This new standard will enable a wide range of connected devices to communicate with and through mobile phones. Four new chips were announced at the all-day event – a sure sign of gathering momentum.
The exciting aspect of Bluetooth low energy is its ability to enable low cost devices to be made that can send their data all of the way to the web. It’s based on over ten years of experience and promises to have the fastest growing ecosystem of any wireless standard. Today’s meeting sent a clear message to developers that they need to start designing now to be ready for the first generation of Bluetooth low energy handsets.
At last week’s G20 summit, the GSM Association assembled 24 of their operators to provide a petition requesting access to more spectrum. The reason was to allow them to make mobile broadband a key part of their country’s broadband plans. Whether or not they get their wish is still to be seen, but it sends a powerful message that they, as well as fixed line operators, can be part of the broadband future.
That’s important for them, as it places them far more firmly on their individual country’s roadmap towards a broadband future. In turn, that’s important to handset developers, who will see it as justification to include broadband related technologies and features. And it’s important to manufacturers of connected consumer devices that will extend the broadband reach beyond the handset. It gives further emphasis to Bluetooth’s claim to be the mainstream low power technology for low power healthcare devices. The reason is simple – an expansion of handsets supporting mobile broadband will mean a bigger critical mass of Bluetooth gateways. That’s a reality the Continua Health Alliance and health device designers needs to factor into their plans.