Health-Care Wireless Woes: Finding A Cure

The answer's complex. For one thing, these systems are cost-prohibitive, and the health-care vertical is one of the most cautious when it comes to spending money on solutions that don't directly relate to medical technology.

Another concern is that technology deployments may interfere with medical equipment. That's especially a possibility when it comes to 802.11 and the up-and-coming Bluetooth short-range communications architecture, both of which have been known to adversely affect the performance of medical systems. While some performance degradation may be tolerable when using traditional enterprise applications, and in personal use, it's unacceptable when a surgeon is leaning over a patient in an operating room.

A third concern: Could wireless implementations hinder privacy of patient data? Because of government regulations, hospitals need to aggressively protect information about their patients, so it's no surprise that administrators are squirmish about sending in-house data to hundreds of mobile devices.

But most hospital administrators see the value of wirelessly connecting health-care workers and providing instant access to patient information, and up until now, those tasks have been achieved via traditional one- and two-way paging devices. Other systems, however, can do even more. Wireless interactive messaging solutions, such as Research in Motion's BlackBerrys, offer fast connections and a secure communications infrastructure.

Solution providers and vendors are making headway in the health-care arena by addressing concerns and demonstrating the potential ROI of wireless deployments in that vertical.

Aztec Wireless Networking, an integrator in Allentown, Pa., has been deploying health-care solutions since 2000. Wireless systems prevent record-keeping errors and allow medical personnel to interact more closely with patients, said Aztec sources.

At Somerset Medical Center, an acute-care and teaching hospital in New Jersey, Aztec is helping to upgrade a clinical information system. Although the system is little more than a year old, the hospital wants to expand it by adding hundreds of additional PCs and 85 wireless terminals that will deliver password-protected access to the hospital's private intranet and Cerner Millennium clinical info system.

One thing solution providers can do to address the security concerns inherent in wireless health-care deployments is to deploy multiple wireless networks that offer various flavors of accessibility and security. For example, a standard 802.11b wireless system might be installed for general visitor access, while a more secure, 802.11g system could be used for accessing more sensitive information. Of course, using multiple networks presents yet another set of problems, including roaming, data synchronization and reliability.

Aztec is tackling those issues head-on by working with ceiling-tile maker Armstrong World Industries. Armstrong is developing iCeiling products, which have multiple antennas built into the back of the ceiling tiles. The result is something that looks like an everyday ceiling but is capable of juggling multiple wireless signals.

Meanwhile, Bluesocket is another player that's enjoying success in the wireless space. For the Burlington, Mass.-based wireless developer, health care is a primary vertical target because the need for mobility is so strong there, said David Juitt, CTO and chief security architect at the company. On the whole, wireless deployments have boosted productivity in the health-care arena by about 25 percent, he said.

Tim Scannell, president of Shoreline Research, can be reached at [email protected].