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Apr. 17, 2008

Medical facilities in the U.S. have some of the most mobile workers in the country, turning the health care industry into one of the early adopters of wireless (Wi-Fi) technologies.

Health care centers, clinics and hospitals have predominately turned to Wi-Fi networks to provide in-building data coverage wherever doctors and nurses are, and increasingly where mobile equipment and other assets are located.

ABI Research reveals that over 81.9 percent of the hospitals in the U.S. have Wi-Fi networks, or 6,161 of all the 7,526 hospitals surveyed.

Recently, several companies announced products and services aiming at that need at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in late February, one of the largest IT shows for health care.

Cisco, a leading networking vendor for the hospitals, announced targeted applications for its Mobility Healthcare Solutions portfolio. Cisco also revealed a number of companies certified under its Compatible Extensions Program.

However, hospitals are also looking for more than just networking, according to Ben Gibson, senior director of mobility solutions for Cisco. He says they are increasingly asking for specific applications and services that can run on their Wi-Fi networks to make them more useful and provide better care for patients, while at the same time boosting ROI.

One of the many improvements Cisco showed at HIMSS was the use of its Wi-Fi location capabilities and RFID tags to locate personnel and specific equipment. Gibson says Cisco can track equipment if it has a Wi-Fi radio or an RFID tag.

Wi-Fi provides room-level accuracy while RFID can be more precise. Tags are used for a wide variety of tracking purposes, including keeping track of newborn infants in a maternity ward. Gibson cautions that babies aren’t being tracked yet, but it is possible by having an RFID wristband.

One of Cisco’s partners, AeroScout, has been endorsed by the American Hospital Association for Wi-Fi-based RFID tracking. AeroScout has a number of other health care-focused products under its Healthcare Visibility Suite, including its recent wireless temperature monitoring application.

Tracking temperatures in drug and other containers is among the standards set by health care regulatory organizations, so being able to monitor them wirelessly saves on personnel time and helps reduce complexity.

AeroScout’s product uses Wi-Fi RFID tags with integrated temperature sensors and software to log and act on temperature data. The same tags and infrastructure can be used for other purposes, such as asset tracking.

The tags are placed inside refrigerators, freezers and deep freezers that contain items such as vaccines, pharmaceuticals, tissues, blood bags, organs and patient test results.

The tags automatically send temperature readings over a Wi-Fi network to AeroScout’s MobileView software. If the temperature exceeds or goes below a set threshold, an alert is triggered and is immediately sent to hospital staff.

“On any given day, we’re taking an industry-specific approach to wireless networking, with more integration solutions and not just networking. Our mobility solutions are fully integrated with medical systems and equipment, enabling these professionals to quickly respond, diagnose, collaborate and treat patients at the point of care,” said Gibson.

Cisco’s Gibson says RFID tags have become cheaper, still in the $20 range for “active” tags that automatically send data, but their cost can be justified for high-value equipment because of the savings in efficiencies, staff time and how quickly they can be deployed.

Inner Wireless Inc. also has a location platform for hospitals under its PanGo Platform. PanGo’s technology makes location data and other sensory information available to a number of handheld devices and is certified for Cisco’s 7921G wireless IP phone. Caregivers can use these devices to track patients, medical devices and monitor temperatures.

Two other companies, Ascom and InfoLogix, also recently partnered on an asset and personnel tracking solution using InfoLogix’s RFID technology and Ascom’s i875 Wi-Fi handset and messaging suite. The companies say the solution gives clinicians immediate access to integrated voice and data to locate the nearest resource at all times, whether it is a defibrillator, infusion pump, anesthesiologist or security officer.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: HIMSS.