Two years ago, my daughter was walking in a Rhode Island park with a friend. They stopped at a bench to chat and she put her purse containing an iPhone 3GS on the ground. Across the street, two men watched them from the porch. My daughter and her friend continued their walk but she left her purse behind. When she returned 15 minutes later, the iPhone was gone.
She was convinced that the men watching her pilfered it, but she had no way to prove it.
If only my daughter would have lost an iPhone5, then recovery would have been easy :-)
Earlier this year, I wrote about laptop recovery via nanny cam.
I've written about BIDMC's use of our wireless network to locate 5000 devices throughout the hospital.
Now there is an entire suite of tools for mobile devices including remote camera activation, automated file replication to the cloud, and GPS reporting that help locate lost or stolen devices.
The use of mobile devices in healthcare is growing exponentially at the same time that compliance requirements to protect these devices are becoming more stringent. It's clear that new mobile devices are going to include the geolocation tools necessary to reduce anxiety in CIOs and users.
Self recovery of your mobile device - that's cool!