Mid Sweden University

The world's aging population and limited hospital resources together with advancements in information technology provides a thorough basis for further development of tele-healthcare and assisted living. For ordinary people, and especially elderly people, to be diagnosed and treated in their homes there is a definite need for technical equipment that is extremely easy to handle. One way to facilitate tele-healthcare is to take advantage of modern cell phone technology and the infrastructure surrounding these units. Many elderly people are today comfortable with using cell phones and even advanced smart phones can be purchased to a cost that is low compared to corresponding specialized medical equipment. The concept presented in this work is based upon Near Field Communication (NFC), a wireless feature that is currently being widely launched in cell phones. Amongst other capabilities, NFC technology allows a phone to act as a 13.56 MHz RFID reader. This work shows how NFC-equipped phones can be used to read passive NFC tags that in turn are equipped with general resistive sensors and how sensor data are read and communicated to a web server without the need to push a single button. © 2011 ACM.