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Technology talks the talk
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13/11/2007
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Two very dissimilar applications – one in machinery, the other in medicine – are both being solved by relying on spoken rather than written information.
Printed instructions are said to be meaningless to around 20% of the European Population. This, combined with the 8 million blind and partially sighted people in Europe, contributes to nearly 200,000 deaths a year in the EU due to mis-dose and non-compliance of prescribed medication.
UK-based Pera has developed ‘talking packaging’ in the shape of Medi-Voice. The idea is to take current compliance monitoring, enhance it and combine it with speech technology in smart pharmaceutical blister packaging which than can give spoken instructions.
The packaging will be powered by thin film, flexible, photovoltaic laminates, with homogenisation of the photovoltaic and the polymer packaging through in-mould labelling. The speech system and compliance electronics will be developed onto a flexible PCB that will be incorporated by over-moulded into the packaging.
A piezo-electric sounder is also to be encapsulated into the polymer packaging during the injection moulding process. Dosage assurance will be achieved through the printing of conductive ink electrodes onto the blister sealing film that will input to the compliance circuitry.
At the same time, Werma Signaltechnik has developed a ‘vocal’ module that can be integrated into its Kombisign signal tower.
It can be used “to address machine operators directly with a spoken text to ensure a rapid response, or announce break times with an encouraging ‘Let’s have a break’ instead of the usual gong”.
The vocal element can replay sounds, songs and recorded spoken messages, with existing audio files able to be ‘dragged and dropped’.
“The product has been designed in response to our belief that modern MP3 technology gives people the freedom to customise whatever message or sound they want to signal with minimum fuss and specialist intervention,” says Simon Adams, managing director of Werma UK.
www.aki.co.uk www.werma.co.uk
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Author
Tom Shelley
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