News

Over-heating tummies: "marathon walkers" swallow RFID pills

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 13 August 2008

How do you monitor the temperature of a long-distance walker? It matters - in a Dutch four-day event two years ago, 69 people went to hospital, over-heated, and two died.

Four Days Marches of Nijmegen triggered a study by Radboud University in the Netherlands into ways to monitor the health of marchers during the event. The solution: a RFID thermometer, swallowed, and feeding a constant stream of data:

Using complex event processing (CEP) technology provided by Progress Software, researchers were able to monitor and record the ten volunteers' temperatures via a signal transmitted every ten seconds from the RFID "pill" to a receiving device in the volunteer's backpack. That data was then transmitted via Bluetooth to a GPS-enabled mobile phone (provided by Dutch telecommunications operator KPN) to the operations center at Radboud.

Read the full report from RFI Update.