Students develop “The Personal Tracker”

Four Ngee Ann Polytechnic students have devised a mobile phone application that is able to track one’s whereabouts in real time. Called the “The Personal Tracker”, the application is the work of the polytechnic’s final-year information technology students. It has been piloted by one healthcare service provider to keep track of its elderly clients.

63-year-old Chey Yat Hoe, a self-confessed technophile, was one of the first to get his hands on The Personal Tracker. He tested the tracker as part of a pilot study facilitated by Econ Healthcare, a health services provider at Golden Jasmine where Chey resides. He said: “It’s very easy because it’s light, and you just key a few digits, and you are able to call, get the application up. My wife and my son straight away know where I am. “So even if I go out, my wife will know where I am, whether it’s in a taxi or in a shopping centre.” On whether a tracking system invades his privacy, Chey said: “It’s a small price to pay for one’s safety. “A little bit of sacrifice in this area, (but) you have more benefits – more people know where you are, they are able to trace you. As we grow old, retired people, old people, should have these kinds of things.

“I think as long as we are still alive, technology is catching up, since the days of the automated teller machine. That was the first step of upgrading into the IT world. Sooner or later, you are forced to use it.” The app works on two levels. When the application is installed on a user’s smartphone, healthcare providers, for instance, are able to track, in real-time, the location of their charges on a central computer system. Then, there is the app’s mobile function. Because it was designed for the elderly, who may not always be comfortable using smart phones, the app tracker features very basic instructions. Pressing the ‘help’, for instance, will send out an alert to the server, as well as an SMS to the person’s caregiver. The SMS is attached with a map that pinpoints the location of the mobile phone user. It took the four final-year students (Nicholas Ooi, Eric Lee, Shou Yee and Thomas Tan) from Ngee Ann Polytechnic some eight months to get the application up and running. They received S$137,000 in funding from the TOTE Board which went towards purchasing the software, as well as the hardware such as smart phones.

The boys, all from the School of Information Technology, also had to contend with different operating systems. Nicholas Ooi, one of the developers of The Personal Tracker, said: “We had to develop it on three different platforms – the iPhone, Android and Windows 7. We wrote the application three times to ensure stability.” The developers are looking to conduct another pilot study covering a bigger group in April next year.

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