Irish mobile tech showcased at MWC


15 Feb 2010

Ehealth and social networking are the focus of some of the Irish companies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year.

The National Digital Research Centre in partnership with Rococo Software has brought two University College Dublin research projects – HeartPhone and LocalSocial – to the MWC to get global exposure and further the commercialisation of these novel technologies.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to exhibit two of NDRC’s innovative projects at Mobile World Congress this year. NDRC is about accelerating digital ideas to commercial viability and income. We are achieving this through deep collaborations between the worlds of business and academia,” said NDRC CEO Ben Hurley.

“As an indicator of NDRC’s progress, it is great to see that some of our projects are ready for global exposure at commercially-focused events like this.”

HeartPhone is a collaboration between the NDRC, BiancaMed, Crofton Cardiac and UCD that looks at how congestive heart failure patients can be monitored from within their own homes with intelligent mobile technologies that track and wirelessly report ‘at risk’ changes.

LocalSocial recently won the ‘Collaboration of the Year Award’ at the Irish Software Association Awards and is a partnership between the NDRC, Rococco Software and UCD.

Using Bluetooth technology, LocalSocial is a social proximity framework that can be used by developers to create mobile applications that combine real-time and social information and can enable social networks and mobile operators to offer more powerful proximity.

By Marie Boran

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