July/Aug 2005

Mobile staff working within fixed premises such as factories, hospitals and campuses could soon be contacting each other wirelessly via hands-free Vocera Communication Badges. The system provides wireless links over Wi-Fi wireless local-area networks, harnessing the latest Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and speech recognition technologies.

The system offers various operational scenarios, including one-way and two-way messaging. A classic instance might arise where someone wants to locate a person in the vicinity with a specific skill set (a medical specialist, for instance), and simply expresses the requirements verbally. Vocera interprets the request, identifies the right recipient and transmits the request, which can even be translated back into spoken form.

The Vocera Communications System has been available in the United States since 2002, and now the company has opened an office in the UK. It is working through resellers, and Worldwide Solutions has already signed on as a solutions provider.

The latest version 3.1 of the Vocera software is said to have been adapted to interface seamlessly with existing UK systems such as PBX telephone exchanges and message alert systems such as Nurse Call. It incorporates Nuance Communications' UK English speech model.