The View from Cloud-NFC: Keyman Cover, Critical Illness and 50 Shades of Br...

The View from Cloud-NFC: Keyman Cover, Critical Illness and 50 Shades of Br...: You’re in business and you’re cosy in the knowledge that you’ve got keyman\death\critical illness cover.  In your mind, that’s one...

Keyman Cover, Critical Illness and 50 Shades of Bright Grey - Why You Should Be Worried.

You’re in business and you’re cosy in the knowledge that you’ve got keyman\death\critical illness cover.  In your mind, that’s one area that you don’t have to worry about.  If the worst happens and you get sick, to the extent that you can’t run your business, the insurance company will pay an agreed lump sum to assist in your care or to employ suitably qualified personnel to keep the business going in your absence.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Well, let me ask you a question.  What’s your critical illness going to be?  Are you going to have a stroke?  A brain haemorrhage? Heart failure? Or will you be on dialysis as a result of kidney failure?  Or, will you get a rare one that very few people have heard of?

As absurd as it sounds, this is the reality of your ‘cosy keyman’ cover.  Choose your critical illness with great care or you will not be covered.  Consider this…

In March 2011, I was diagnosed with a rare blood disease, Amyloidosis, which – without treatment – is progressive and fatal.  Nothing in my background, nor my lifestyle, could have provided an early warning that I would get this illness.  Even with treatment, the average life expectancy for a large percentage of patients is 5-10 years.

I got Amyloidosis and it made me very ill.  It also put me onto an intensive programme of chemotherapy for four months with no guarantee of recovery.  As a direct consequence, I was away from work for over a year and the inevitable happened.  Sales dried up and a good little business of 12 years shrivelled away.

Sounds like there was no insurance cover in place, doesn’t it?  Actually, there was. 

However, Bright Grey Insurance – in common with many others that I’ve now had a look into – include three words in their product information that you would do well to consider before taking out a critical illness policy with them.

FROM.  OUR. LIST.

That’s right.  You are only covered for a critical illness if it’s on their list.  Unfortunately, Amyloidosis is not on that list and, as a result, they declined to pay out. 

In my opinion, this is wrong and the law needs changed to stop policies being advertised as ‘death and critical illness’ when the critical illnesses are being prescribed in this way.  It’s not as if you can make a choice in advance.

To me, it would make more sense if the ‘effect’ of the critical illness was the determinant of the pay-out rather than the diagnosis itself.  There is a precedent for this in the Equality Act and its predecessor, The Disability Discrimination Act.  For people to be considered ‘disabled’ under the law, they need to prove that “they have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on their ability to do normal daily activities.”

I don’t think that it would be unreasonable to expect a similar definition being sufficient to determine if a business person is so seriously ill that they cannot carry out their normal duties over the long term.

So, dig out that cosy policy again and have a look for those three little words ‘on our list’. 

And then decide which critical illness you want to have.

(You might want to consider reposting this as the more people who are aware of the issue, the greater the chances of change).

Could Qik.com Become the 'e' in Emergency Services?

Do you use Qik.com?  If you don't, you are probably not aware that you can get an app for your phone that allows you to 'beam' or 'stream' live video from your Smartphone to anyone, anywhere, who is similarly equipped, with either a smartphone or computer connected to the Internet.  It works over 3G, 4G, Wifi and allows users to send video direct to their Facebook wall as it's being filmed, as well as uploading it to Qik's own site.

The basic version is free and is pretty good.  I've used it several times and it is a really handy thing to have on your Smartphone if like me, any part of your job might involve surveys that other people might have an interest in. 

If you want, you could have other people - already on site - to carry out the survey itself, under your direction.  You are in front of a PC and your virtual assistant is doing the leg-work at the other end.  For my own part, I've had my iPhone under floorboards with a flashlight, filming the route of a water leak, viewing it seconds later on my laptop. 

So, you get the idea that this Qik thing could be useful for a lot of things.

Being Qik to Respond

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed what looked like a road-rage incident and called the Police.  In the time that it took me to dial 999, be put through to the operator and then connected to the police, lots of action was taking place on the ground, as it were.  Lots of evidence of a crime was unfolding but I was only able to process snippets of it in my mind, trying to make sense of what was going on so that I could relay it back to the police operator.

In the evening, I gave a statement to police officers, which was all carefully written down in notebook form for me to sign.  All well and good.

And then I thought about Qik.com

Supposing one of the app buttons on your phone connected you directly to the emergency services and sent them live pictures of what the problem was, at the same time recording it for evidentiary purposes.  Allied to GPS information, authorities would be in a much better position to respond to situations as they unfold - and would have a 'starter for ten' when it comes to investigating major incidents later on.

Why You Might Need Both an iPhone and a Google Nexus S.

On the face of it, it sounds extravagant, if not a little ridiculous, to be carrying two quality Smartphones around at the same time, when one would do.  But that's just it;  one won't do...

Here's the dilemma.  As Cloud-NFC lives and breathes NFC (Near Field Communication), it needs to be able to demonstrate the capabilities of this 'Touch and Go' technology to win new clients and further the general awareness of NFC. 

Google Nexus S - Great for NFC but no AV output

At the moment, the best choice is probably the Google (Samsung) Nexus S with its silky-smooth transitions and super clear AMOLED screen technology.  Running on Google's 2.3 version of Gingerbread, it has NFC functionality, although this is primarily for reading tags, as opposed to writing  to them.  (If you search YouTube, you'll find lots of people offering tips and hacks on how to write to tags from the Nexus).  So, the NFC on the phone is great but what isn't great is the fact that the Nexus has no AV output, other than a 3.5mm earphone jack.  (This drawback will become relevant a few paragraphs on from here!)

My phone of choice is the iconic iPhone 4 (not ready for an update), which preserved my sanity during a two-week stay in hospital last year and has never failed me.  As an aside, it has an ergonomic advantage over the Nexus in that you always know where the home key is as it's an indent on the surface of the phone itself.  On the Nexus, there is no such locator and this can be real nightmare in bright sunlight, just to see the opening menu.  But that's a niggle, not a drawback.

i-Phone 4 with the really useful home key

The iPhone doesn't have NFC, although there are always rumours that iPhone 5 will have it; only time will tell.  Now, you can get a clip-on device called iCarte from Canadian company, Wireless Dynamics, that allows you to get NFC functionality on the iPhone.  It's not widely available just yet and will add considerably to the cost of your iPhone so, if you haven't already bought the phone, you have to wonder if you shouldn't just get a Nexus.

The iCarte Clip On NFC Device (for iPhones) from Wireless Dynamics

Well, let's go back to what I said earlier - lack of an AV output is a major drawback on the Nexus when it comes to doing presentations. 

You see, another clever range of devices has been doing the rounds and Cloud-NFC have been putting a couple through their paces.  They're called pico projectors and, as the name suggests, they are tiny.  Tiny but very effective in the right conditions.  They vary in price from around £150 to £500 and can be connected to certain Smartphones, Laptops and other media players to project video and still images up to a diagonal size of 50" to 120".

Aiptek Pico Projector - Similar in Length to the i-Phone and about as thick as your thumb!

i-Phone AV Connector and Cables

So the iPhone, which doesn't have NFC, does have an optional cable that outputs from the iPhone composite AV to RCA cable.  It's simple and effective, although the battery on the projector only has a lifespan sufficient to watch a standard feature film, but not much more.  The Nexus, on the other hand, does have NFC but has no AV output. 

What we want to do for a number of our clients is to access information held on Cloud databases that we've created, with the simple 'touch' of the NFC phone, retrieve the content and project it onto any suitable surface. 

Consequently, this little task can only be achieved with ease if either a)Apple decides to provide NFC as standard in its phones or b) Google\Samsung offer an AV ouptut on its Nexus phone.  Personally, I feel that the Nexus should have shipped with the AV output facility as it's a high-end phone and you do feel a bit cheated when you discover that it doesn't have it.  NFC is a genuine enhancement - AV output is just sensible.

NFC - Social Value First Then The Hearts and e-Wallets Will Follow!

Google Nexus S - With NFC Capability

In case you don't know, NFC (Near Field Communication) is a new technology to most of the UK population. Simply put, it is a mobile technology that allows you to do a variety of clever things, just by touching a 'smart tag', another NFC enabled device (like a till, audio speakers) or another NFC mobile phone.

NFC at McDonalds - Are We Lovin It?

So, for example (and this is real-life now), you can go into McDonald's, order a McFlurry and a shake and pay for the whole thing by 'kissing' the payment terminal with your NFC mobile phone. Want to let your Facebook friends know that you've visited a particular restaurant? Just touch the appropriate Smart Tag and the job's done.

Transport for London's NFC Oyster Card

Without realising it, you may already be using NFC. Oyster cards, used so successfully on the London Underground, are astounding examples of this technology's usefulness. Touch the ticket machine to charge it up with your credit card then use it on every turnstile gate on the Tube system - just by touch.

You'd think that, with all the potential uses of NFC, we'd all be using it by now. Why, then, has the long-awaited dawn of near-field communication eluded us thus far, when it is already massively popular elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Far East.

I'm inclined to think that one of the main reasons is that most of the hype about NFC revolves around contactless payments, hoping that we will all pay for everything with our mobile phones, making cash a thing of the past. Whilst I'm an advocate of NFC and want to see this happen, I also believe that it is more likely to happen if non-payment applications of NFC are brought to the fore, so that the person in the street can build up trust in the technology before relying on it to store credit\debit card information.

 Cloud-NFC  has been creating niche applications in the care sector for NFC for the last two years, characterised by two things: simplicity and usefulness. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean by this. Suppose someone is living alone at home and has a hearing loss. A caller comes to the door and needs to be interrogated as to their identity. The home owner with the hearing loss is likely to be at a disadvantage, and could be vulnerable prey to a conman posing as a workman in this situation. How can NFC help?

Our solution was to stick a 'smart tag' (an NFC antenna that looks just like a flat label) on the back of the front door, that the home owner can touch with the NFC phone whenever the potential 'bogus caller' situation arises. As soon as it's touched, the system kicks in and sends a pre-coded text message to 4 or 5 trusted neighbours, just to say 'Mr so-and-so at No 12 has an unidentified caller. Can you assist?)

And think about this. Many people, suffering from Alzheimer's disease and dementia, find comfort by being able to interact with things that had meaning for them when they were much younger. Photographs, old post-cards of their town or village, a song from a bygone era all help to reassure them. Care homes very often have 'memory boxes' for their residents to interact with, having a calming, therapeutic effect that brings benefits to the residents and reduces stress on staff. How does NFC figure in this scenario, you might ask?

Well, in more than one case, we trawled the internet to find links to 'past-times video clips', written recollections from years ago, music and voice too - and then associated this 'treasure trove' with an NFC Tag. What this meant was that, for the lady in question - or her carers - she could simply touch the tag with a Google Nexus S phone and have rich media content delivered to her, wherever and whenever she needed it.

The same goes for explaining routine procedures at a hospital to someone who doesn't speak English or requires information in an alternative format, as a result of a sensory loss or a learning disability. By touching a pre-coded NFC Tag with an NFC phone or reader, the patient can access, for example, a full explanation of the MRI scanning procedure - in a language or format that suits him\her.

We love Google because it's simple to use and the stuff it delivers is useful to us in our daily lives. NFC should be no different because it is also simple to use and can deliver huge benefits to all of us in our day to day lives.

So, to all the big guys out there pushing NFC (like Google, Gemalto, Nokia, Lucent Alcatel and Barclaycard etc and contactless payment systems, here's a thought from a fan.) Show people that this amazing technology can be put to uses that will help them take some of the 'grunt' out of life. Once they see the social benefits, their trust, their hearts and their cash will follow.