Voice activated badges – those space-aged communication devices once only seen on Star Trek – are the newest accessory for the doctors, nurses and staff at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust in Truro.

With a quick press of a button, a doctor can say the name of a colleague or department and speak with the appropriate person as they would on a telephone. Operating on a BT wireless network, the badges are about the size and shape of an iPod nano and can be worn around the neck or pinned to a lapel.

Royal Cornwall is the first in the UK to introduce the BT Managed Vocera system, though it is already used in some UK hospitals. The hospital is only experimenting with the badges at this time, but the trust hopes to roll the devices out to all staff starting in April, according to The Register.

In an environment where people need to be reached urgently and are not often at a desk phone, the wearable badges will improve communications in the hospital. Staff won’t need to remember telephone numbers or carry lists, or even stop what they are doing to consult with colleagues on the opposite end of the building.

Simon Goodwin, director of IT for the Cornwall NHS Community, said: “The new system is simple to use and will allow us to respond more quickly to our patients’ needs.”

The hopsital could replace walkie-talkies, pagers and mobile phones with the wearable badges if they are found to be more efficient.

The Vocera system is based on a BT wireless local area network and uses mobile Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to convert voice into IP packets which can be transmitted over the network and reassembled into voice at the receiving device, according to BT.