Month: October 2012

Choosing a Wireless Standard

The first question that most designers ask when adding wireless to their product is “which wireless standard to use?”  In some cases, where it is connecting to an existing product, that’s easy to answer.  If it’s not, it’s a lot more difficult.  It’s one reason I wrote a book about it – to try and help designers answer that question.  But another part of the same question is how well the different standards promote themselves as a solution? 

This year has seen some major changes within some of those wireless standards.  The ZigBee Alliance has lost Benno Ritter – for many years the global marketing face of ZigBee.  And the Bluetooth SIG has replaced its Chairman, Mike Foley, as well as its CTO, Andy Glass.  Both are interesting moves, as each of these standards is still evolving.  ZigBee is taking on smart lighting, home automation and smart metering, whilst Bluetooth is finally seeing Bluetooth Smart appearing in the mainstream.  In a recent issue of Incisor magazine, Vince Holton wrote about the loss of passion within the Bluetooth SIG – a sentiment that I’d echo and also extend to some of the other wireless standards.  But that’s an opinion formed from being close to these groups.  A few years ago I ran to survey to try and see what the general engineering opinion was of the different wireless standards. Prompted by Vince’s article, I thought it would be useful to run the survey again to see what designers think as we approach the end of 2012.

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Digital First – a Patient Perspective

A couple of years ago I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about how much the NHS could save each year by implementing some fairly basic mHealth initiatives.  Nothing very complicated – mostly simple stuff like appointment reminders, but with the help of some silly projections from NESTA I reckoned there was potential to save almost £13 billion a year from the NHS budget. 

A few weeks ago I came across a much more sensible proposal in the form of Transform’s Digital First report for the NHS.  Whilst my effort was largely based on fanciful numbers from corporate PR departments and think tanks trying to get noticed, the Digital First report uses real examples of current practice within different parts of the NHS.  It looks at ten easy-win initiatives which, if they were to be implemented across the wider NHS, could release funding of £2.9 billion per year. 

These are not high tech; they don’t require massive capital investment, they’re just ten good ideas which have been developed and deployed locally and which can be copied throughout the country.  Most are centred on GP practice.  In each case, the report describes the current implementation, the degree of difficulty (or in many cases the ease) of attempting each project, and details of how to do it.  There’s even a Digital First website “designed to help NHS staff implement Digital First”.  The report is essentially an instruction manual for every GP surgery.  I’d recommend downloading and reading it.  And the next time you see your GP, give them a copy or ask them how they’re getting on with it.

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