Medic Exchange: Visonic Technologies (VT), a global leader in unified RFID / RTLS safety and security solutions for the global healthcare industry, announces the immediate availability of its enhanced Elpas Active RFID/RTLS Reusable Tag. The tag’s unique form factor and comfort, now makes it more suitable for providing abduction deterrence for newborns and infants in maternity units and neonatal care departments or for the monitoring and tracking of high-risk patients who show signs of elopement and or wandering.

The tag’s dual technology transmitter emits low power, beacon type UHF radio frequency (RF) messages as well as supplemental infra-red (IR) messages that can be used to determine the location of the infant/patient to room level and sub-room level precision in open and enclosed indoor spaces without EMF interference to hospital equipment.

The Reusable Tag incorporates a magnetic low frequency (LF) receiver that adds chokepoint area detection so whenever a patient/infant physically comes in close proximity to a prohibited exit/entrance a security intervention alarm can be configured to automatically trigger. The tag also transmits supervision messages for keeping security personnel informed of device tampering or the unsupervised removal of the patient/infant from the protected area.

The Elpas Reusable Tag has been reengineered in direct response to the growing need for more effective user-friendly, risk management tools in acute care hospitals, psychiatric units, geriatric care clinics; long-term nursing care facilities or pediatric units. “The use of the Elpas Reusable Tag for infant/patient identification, baby/mother matching, wandering patient monitoring, emergency calls and exit/entrance alerting provides healthcare professionals with an innovative solution to these worrisome concerns," said Michael Wasserstein, CEO of Visonic Technologies. “Additionally, the tag’s field-proven hospital-grade IP-67 water-rating outer casing, together with its new low power design ensures more then three years of maintenance-free patient deployments.”

Click here for complete story from Medic Exchange

Information Week: Like Bluetooth, the Wi-Fi Direct standard will enable peer-to-peer device connections without the need for a Wi-Fi hotspot.

By Marin Perez, InformationWeek

The Wi-Fi Alliance announced a new specification Wednesday that will enable smartphones, laptops, and other electronics to connect to each other without the use of a traditional Wi-Fi hotspot.

The Wi-Fi Direct specification will enable devices to create peer-to-peer connections that have similar data transfer speeds and range as typical Wi-Fi. The alliance said the new standard will be faster than existing ad-hoc modes, and it could be used to enable laptops to quickly connect to a printer, as well as for consumer-oriented purposes like peer-to-peer game machine connections. Wi-Fi Direct devices will also be able to connect with existing Wi-Fi certified devices for one-to-one connections, or several devices can connect simultaneously.

The alliance, anticipating that devices with the new specification could find their way into corporations, has built in some security features such WPA2, as well as management options to ensure Wi-Fi direct devices don't become insecure bridges between the corporate infrastructure and other networks. The alliance expects to begin certifying Wi-Fi Direct devices in 2010.

"Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn't available," said Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, in a statement. "The impact is that Wi-Fi will become even more pervasive and useful for consumers and across the enterprise."

The new specification has the potential to displace other peer-to-peer connection standards, but other wireless transfer protocols have been boosting their features. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has shown off the Bluetooth 3.0 standard, which offers faster transfer speeds than previous versions. Near-field communication is also gaining steam as a viable way to implement mobile payment systems, andSony (NYSE: SNE)'s TransferJet protocol offers wireless transfer speeds of up to 560 Mbps between devices.

Please also check another related article http://www.rft.com/images/docs/HIMSSrls_02-08.pdf for Peer to Peer Wi-Fi RTLS.

Click here for complete story from Information Week

LinkedIn: As Vice-President of PinPoint Sales and Marketing, you will have responsibilities in the following general areas: strategic planning and execution, direct field sales and marketing management, partnerships and strategic relationships.

Click here for complete story from LinkedIn