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Care Technology Glossary of Terms

We have compiled a list of key terms used in the technology-enabled care sector. This resource will be continuously reviewed and updated. Please inform us if there are any terms you would like to see added to the glossary.

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  • Narrow Band IoT is a standards-based low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. NB-IoT significantly improves the power consumption of user devices, system capacity and spectrum efficiency. Battery life of more than 10 years can be supported for many use cases. Supported by all major mobile equipment, chipset and module manufacturers, NB-IoT can co-exist with 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile networks. It also benefits from all the security and privacy features of mobile networks, such as support for user identity confidentiality, entity authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and mobile equipment identification.
  • Any telephone number other than a geographic number. Monitoring centres use non-geographic numbers to redirect calls to their call-handling platform. This makes it easy to redirect them to a secondary site or backup provider in the event of a primary site failure.
  • The action of notifying someone or something about a situation that requires a response. Notification alerts may be as simple as a flashing light or an alarm sounder to notify a responder living at the same property. Increasingly, it consists of a text message, e-mail, telephone call or an in-app notification to a remote responder using their smartphone or computer.
  • A digital IP alarm protocol for grouped housing. See BS 8521-2.