A company has combined available Wi-Fi technology with server-based voice recognition to create a Star Trek-like communicator.

Just as the communicators that Captain Kirk carried down to alien planets in the 1960s version of the Viacom TV show foreshadowed a world with ubiquitous mobile telephones, the two-ounce badge central to the Vocera Communications System was inspired at least in part by the “com badges” that appeared on later versions of the show. Just as Captain Picard would do, Vocera badge wearers can touch the slim device they wear on their uniforms, say who they want to talk to and, assuming that person is wearing his badge, be connected.

Interestingly, hospitals are the prime environment for this kind of thing.

It turns out that communication in a hospital is often an amazingly inefficient affair. Nurses and doctors spend a lot of time playing phone and page tag. Nurses need approvals for treatments from doctors who often aren’t easy to find. Paging the doctor usually takes several minutes, by which time a nurse may have left the station where she was waiting. Then the whole process starts over until finally one catches up with the other.

With the Vocera badge, a nurse needs only to hit a button and say the name of a doctor. The request goes over the hospital’s wireless network to the server, which then locates the appropriate doctor and delivers the message more or less instantly. If the doctor is available he or she can respond right back. If not, the nurse can ask for another doctor, by name or by specialty. Say “I need an anesthesiologist,” and the server finds the nearest anesthesiologist and connects him.

All of the components (Wi-Fi, voice recognition, VoIP) of this device are basically off-the-shelf items, but they’re the first company to marry them all together in a convenient package.