We all possess a cell phone and it has become a part of our daily lives. Let's see what we generally do with our cell phone - make calls, SMS, play games, capture images, probably this is what we all can think of but ever imagined a cell phone that can read and write RFID tags, capture data from medical devices and run applications on the handset that interact with backend servers. What if the phone could be used for doing some interesting things like asset tracking, patient identification and data acquisition for starters? The tag writing feature could enable one to create tags in the fields for meds, DME or devices like oxygen therapy systems all without a separate tag writer. Transaction data could be updated or stored in tags that have been deployed in order to create data persistence between visits.

What if the phone could be used with patients for writing and deploying applications in order to track drug usage, patients could be issued blank RFID tags that they could write and apply to meds for new prescription and refills and the phone could serve as a reminder when to take meds and they could scan the RFID tags when they take the medication?

Now you all must be wondering which phone is this. My friend at Medical Connectivity,Tim reported this. It is the Nokia 3220 which is one of the two Nokia GSM/GPRS phones that includes an NFC shell which can be used for reading and writing RFID tags. The other phone is the Nokia 5140. It uses the 13.56 MHz RFID frequency and has a reading range of two to five cm and conforms to ISO 14443A and EMCA 340 standards.

Nokia is also providing an infrastructure on which to build and deploy applications. In order to write apps to run on the handset they have got a Local Interactive Java SDK. As regards the server side they provide connections to an SMS gateway, provide tag, location event data, authentication and authorization, client provisioning and administration.

The company is planning to sell the phones through special health care resellers. The phone and the related infrastructure are being made available in the U.S. on a pilot project basis.