Motorola investment gives a boost to a neat technology

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 April 2007 13:04

Opinion and Analysis

Motorola's equity injection into Vocera Communications, the developer of a system that allows mobile workers to communicate over a WiFi network through a hands-free, wearable badge, could give a much needed boost to a neat technology with lots of potential.

Motorola Ventures, Motorola's strategic venture capital arm, has taken an unspecified stake in Vocera Communications, which claims more than 350 customer installations of its technology worldwide in a variety of industries, including healthcare, retail, and hospitality.

Back in March 2003, at Cisco's Networkers event in Brisbane, I witnessed the demonstration of the Vocera technology. To use the system, you could pick up any Vocera 'badge' and identify yourself by name or by role, for example "duty anaesthetist". Once you've registered, the system tracks the badge as you move about the premises keeping track of which WiFi base station it can be reached through at any particular time.

Any other user of the system can then set up a two way conversation by instructing the pendant to "find John Smith" or "find duty anaesthetist". A broadcast option allows a message to be sent simultaneously to all members of predefined groups, for example "all nursing staff". It is also possible to make and receive PSTN calls through the system.

The company demonstrating Vocera was Air Portal: a small start up hoping to make a go of operating public WiFi hotspots. It failed, and while it did get a trial installation of Vocera at Blacktown Hospital that was about all.

Air Portal were well ahead of the game, by early 2004 Australia was still the only country outside the USA where Vocera had representation, but by that time Vocera had signed up with Logicalis (formerly Logical) as its foundation partner in Australia.