Loosening Hospital Policies on Wireless Devices Fuels Growth

Adjustments made to hospital policies regarding the use of wireless devices have created an atmosphere for the increasing use of these systems. These are the latest findings of Kalorama Information (New York, NY, USA), an independent market research firm.

Wireless devices increasingly used by healthcare workers include tablet PCs, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile and desktop computer stations capable of utilizing wireless personal area networks (WPANs). The current crop of new devices is designed to work in an environment with 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi protocols, Bluetooth, and ZigBee short range communications, and radio frequency identification (RFID), thus offering added protection from unwanted interference. In addition, specific sections of a hospital such as operating rooms (Ors) or intensive care units (ICUs) are often marked as "cellphone-free" to reduce the possibility for interference to some of these technologies.

However, in other centers such bans have not been implemented, or are expected to be lifted due to the inability to reproduce interference. In other hospital departments, on the other hand, a ban on outside wireless devices will likely continue. For example, competing systems running on the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band can cause interference with each other; some wireless phone systems or headsets use the 2.4 GHz band and Wi-Fi routers may also use the same frequency. Technology providers must therefore ensure that their installed systems are not going to interfere with other medical devices. The total market for wireless technologies in healthcare in the United States was valued at US$4.4 billion in 2010; five years earlier, the market was only $1.7 billion.

“The WPANs are the growth engines because of the mobile nature of healthcare delivery,” said Bruce Carlson, the publisher of Kalorama Information. “Some of this growth is due to innovations from device makers to avoid interference, and some is due to the flexibility of hospital policies regarding wireless devices.”

ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on an IEEE 802 standard for WPANs. Applications include wireless light switches, electrical meters with in-home displays, and other consumer and industrial equipment that require short-range wireless transfer of data at relatively low rates. ZigBee is targeted at RF applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking.

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