Young NFC innovators help diabetes patients

September 2006: Demonstrating considerable innovation in their use of NFC, students in the NXP Young Innovators Challenge designed NFC-based solutions for a wide variety of applications. The winning entry deals with an important healthcare issue: the difficulties diabetic patients have in keeping track of diet, exercise and medication.

Seah Yew Keng and Tan Ting Feng emerged as the winners of the NXP Young Innovators Challenge in May this year. Aimed at promoting NFC technology among up-and-coming engineers and technicians, the competition drew entries from 14 teams from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technical University (NTU). All their ideas were original and included designs for use in tourist attractions, entertainment, libraries, advertising and travel.

NUS students Tan and Seah submitted both the concept for and a prototype of a system that helps diabetes patients. A life long chronic illness, diabetes requires a disciplined regime of diet, medication, tests and exercise. Many patients find it difficult to maintain the necessary routine, which is often complicated and tedious, leading to a deterioration of their condition.

Tan and Seah used the strengths of NFC technology to create a system that simplifies the process. Their NFC solution makes it much easier for patients to manage the details of medication intake, recording test results, exercise, and measuring and tracking daily calorie intake.

Together with the prize money of $10,000, the two students, along with the other participating teams, could soon earn a lot more as NXP has relinquished its IP rights to all the designs developed for the competition. For now, Seah and Tan plan to put their winnings to good use - including funding a well-deserved post-graduation trip!

Runner-up prize went to a team from NTU for conceptualizing an NFC-enabled PDA or phone that could serve as a travel tool for translation, airport navigation, organizer and local settings synchronizer. And placed third was a proposal using NFC for a paperless movie ticket and instant viewer review.

Among the other projects in the competition, two that focused on lifestyle applications were showcased to a very appreciative audience at the CommunicAsia 2006 Exhibition in Singapore.

NTU and NUS are the first two universities in the Asia Pacific region to be offered the opportunity to work on NFC. Following the success of this collaboration, NXP is already planning the details of future initiatives based on other new and advanced technologies.