Nexperts and PharmaFabula win NFC Forum’s 2010 competition

The winning entries in this year’s NFC Forum Global Competition include retail payments, healthcare, education and social networking applications.

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COMPETITION: Winners were announced at this week's NFC Forum meeting in Sweden

The NFC Forum has announced the winners of this year’s Global Competition, designed to find the most innovative new applications of near field communication technology.

In the commercial track, for business ideas that address a specific market, business, or consumer need or want, the winning entry is Nexperts‘ Touch & Pay self-service shopping application which has been on test at a rural farm shop in Switzerland. Second place went to ITN International for its NFC events and tradeshow service and third place was awarded to NTT DoCoMo for its wellness support service. This uses dynamic tags embedded into personal healthcare devices to enable patient data to be instantly and conveniently exchanged.

In the research track first place went to Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca’s Club de Innovacion for PharmaFabula, a system using an NFC-enabled mobile device to provide object identification for the blind. The system reports medical information from prescriptions, leaflets and other useful data in audio format and can also provide personal information such as dosage and treatment duration.

Second place in the research track went to Artesis University College Antwerp for its NFC learning environment, which lets teachers tag objects that students can then investigate and explore. The system provides exercises, registers student achievement and keeps teachers up-to-date with progress. Third place went to Lancaster University for MyState, an NFC service which integrates with Facebook and allows users to create interactive environments by placing NFC tags on objects to create individual, personalized applications.

Cash prizes of €5,000 were awarded to the winner in each category with €1,500 for second place and €1,000 for third place.

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