T-Mobile names the winners of the 2009 SME Innovation Award for Integrated Solutions

* The overall winner is BodyTel Europe with a complete mobile solution for monitoring and managing diabetes
* Second prize goes to a comprehensive solution from Phoenix Technology for the management of shuttle bus services
* In third place is the SmartFactoryKL technology initiative with a ground-breaking convergence project for production facilities

“Integrated solutions for small and medium-sized companies” - the winners of T-Mobile’s SME Innovation Award completed this year’s competition topic masterfully. The projects convincingly attest to the broad range of applications and the enormous benefit of integrated information and communications technology. The three solutions from such different areas as telemedicine, fleet management, and production control combine mobile and fixed-network communications to give users greater quality of life and flexibility, as well as more transparency and efficiency, making pioneering contributions to life and work in a networked, digital world. Today,
T-Mobile is awarding prizes to the winners at the innovation forum for SMEs held each year in October at T-Mobile headquarters in Bonn that is organized by the renowned German Association for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (BVMW).

Impressive solutions
First prize in T-Mobile’s innovation competition goes to BodyTel Europe GmbH, Bad Wildungen. This company developed a comprehensive system for monitoring blood sugar and managing diabetes in real time. Key components of this system are the blood glucose meter GlucoTel™ with a Bluetooth module, cell phones with a connection to the mobile Internet and the Java application BodyTel Mobile, plus the BodyTel Center on the Internet. Diabetics who use the solution measure their blood glucose level as usual. The results are automatically transmitted without delay to a secure online glucose log via cell phone. Data such as the dose of insulin and the calculation units for food can also be entered easily. Aside from the patient, other authorized individuals such as physicians and relatives can access the information over the Internet, while the patient can also retrieve it using his or her cell phone. An alarm function can be integrated for carers. This solution, which can be used worldwide, ensures that all the values are recorded immediately. Tedious manual log entries are no longer necessary, and the attending physician and other individuals can keep an eye on the data and react very promptly if needed. What is important from the health insurance companies’ perspective is that the solution is based on existing technologies and services and does not generate any additional integration costs. Among other things, BodyTel is currently developing similar solutions for other vital sensors such as blood pressure measuring devices.

The second winner of the SME Innovation Award 2009 is Phoenix Technology GmbH from Ludwigshafen, which developed an extensive solution for managing shuttle buses. The application assists bus drivers in documenting their trips and communicating with the operations center and the other drivers in the fleet. The solution thus simplifies both the scheduling of the service and the billing of services. In addition, the system automatically documents the trips. It recognizes, for example, that the shuttle bus is approaching a stop and then displays input masks for the driver to record the number of passengers who got on and off. All data is sent directly to a server via a mobile data connection and can be displayed and evaluated over the Internet regardless of location. The platform used for the solution is M-Logbuch, the electronic logbook developed by Phoenix Technology. The application runs on smartphones using the Windows Mobile 6 operating system and an integrated or external GPS receiver. In the future, the solution will be expanded to include continuous, automatic recording of various types of vehicle data such as fuel consumption by connecting the vehicles’ CAN bus.

In third place is the Kaiserslautern-based technology initiative SmartFactoryKL e. V. A consortium from science and industry set up this intelligent factory of the future in 2005 that develops and demonstrates the industrial plant technology of tomorrow and thereafter. An important objective is to systematically use the latest technologies from the IT world and the communications industry for the automation of production. The T-Mobile award is now going to a SmartFactoryKL solution that integrates the current location, communication, and interaction technologies. The focus is on a seamless outdoor and inhouse navigation system developed at SmartFactoryKL as well as on mobile interaction on site with machinery and technical equipment. When repairs need to be made, for example, the solution indicates malfunctioning, supports the planning and scheduling of the required technician capacity, and also enables the technicians to be piloted to their work location outside and inside a factory. In addition, the solution enables workers to call up a lot of machinery and production data on the spot and thus diagnose faults. The application consequently facilitates lean, seamless design of service, maintenance, and control processes in industrial production. The hardware used includes the universal control panel UCP450 developed by SmartFactoryKL itself, which will be marketed in the future by a partner of this pioneering company.

An important competition
As in previous years, 2009 again saw many applications for the SME Innovation Award. Of the around 50 submissions, T-Mobile initially picked the ten finalists who would receive special assistance from the mobile communications operator during the project phase. When selecting the prize winners, the panel of neutral experts paid particular attention to the concept’s feasibility, profitability, and practical advantages. The three winners of the innovation award will receive prize money of EUR 7,500, EUR 5,000, and EUR 2,500. This year was the fourth time that T-Mobile advertised the innovation award. As in 2007, it specifically promotes solutions integrating mobile and fixed-network communications.