Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
Summary: The flexibility and efficiency of WiFi has led many hospitals into looking at new uses for Bluetooth, Zigbee, wireless LAN and location-based services.
We usually think of WiFi in terms of coffee shops.
But WiFi has become, primarily, a medical technology.
ABI Research has been tracking this for years, and says the trend is still going strong. WiFi in medicine has grown 60% in just the latest year, and perhaps more important has become a stalking horse for other wireless technologies.
The flexibility and efficiency of WiFi has led many hospitals into looking at new uses for Bluetooth, Zigbee, wireless LAN and location-based services.
Efforts by companies like Philips to set-aside dedicated spectrum for body area networks now find wide industry support.
Hospitals were once skeptical of using wireless for patient monitoring, fearing interference with visitors' cell phones. Those fears have proven to be overblown.
As a result excitement within the profession for wireless continues to grow. Anything that requires plugs and running wires costs millions before it can be implemented. Wireless solutions require merely a collection of hot spots with routing, and since most hospitals already have them their capital cost is minimal.
Politicians and political interests are also starting to take note of the cost-effectiveness of wireless medicine.
In testimony today before a subcommittee of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Darrell West of the Brookings Institution (above, from Brookings) emphasizes the usefulness of wireless technology in serving rural residents.
Remote monitoring helps these patients take more control over their own conditions, he argues. Monitors for common diseases like diabetes are becoming smaller, less obtrusive, and easier to use.
A Brookings Institution analysis undertaken by economist Robert Litan found that remote monitoring technologies could save as much as $197 billion over the next 25 years. Cost savings are especially prevalent in the chronic disease areas of congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease, diabetes, and skin ulcers.
West, whose work usually focuses on increased political polarization, is advising the Department to buy wireless in order to save money.
But wireless can also make money, for equipment makers, for manufacturers, for re-sellers, and for hospitals.
Wireless medicine is not a partisan point.
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Talkback
Hospitals are catching on
There was a WiFi around the nurses area, but it didn't reach her room. So I went to CompUSA (remember them?) bought an inexpensive antennae and left it with the nurses to get it set up. The IT guy did set it up, then talked to the head of IT who immediately authorized it for all patient rooms.
That not only opened the door for patients getting on the web, but also allowed Skype Video for the wife, which was exceptional for both wife and brother. (They still "visit" almost every day.)
Sometimes it takes something simple to demonstrate and motivate hospitals to move forward. In terms of information I believe that devices like the iPhone and iPad will be pushing the flow of information even faster over the next few years within the hospitals and, when the vendors get around to it, will be part of the Home Health IT that we should be seeing soon.
RE: Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
RE: Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
RE: Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
RE: Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
NOW do you see why healthcare workers hate technology in a lot of hospitals?
There's one other problem: Very few hospitals allow full wifi access to patients/families - if they allow it at all. The only areas in which they even consider it is units like oncology units, or some areas where long stays are common. If you ask patients/families in other areas of hospitals where wifi's available for those patients, if they have been able to access the wifi in regular hospital units, & I'd bet most of the time the answer would be no. If they answer yes, ask how many get to access Skype, or social media, & due to HIPAA & SOX, you're going to get a NO in most cases, due to the special way those things have to be walled off. And try asking for it, even if you have an old person who's back over & over again - chances are, you'll find a security guard telling you they'll "hold" your wifi enabled device until you leave, unless you want to leave right away. Say no, & the cops will be at your door (I just told them I was asking, that I hadn't brought the device this time, & hoped I didn't get searched because if they'd discovered the fib, I'd not have been permitted to visit anymore, even though I was my mother's only child). The other hospital to which she went most had a very, very limited wifi access - in fact, to get email, I had to use the multimedia phone I had with web access, & keep my finger over the camera lens.
Healthcare might be using wifi, & offering it in some cases, but in my geographic area, asking if you can use the hospital's wifi is going to get you a "who do you think you are, give me your device" response. I wouldn't even bet on cancer units allowing its use in some areas, although there was one where, for an extra I think $15 a day, you could have very limited access on certain units. There's a reason so many people buy those broadband connection units for hospitalized patients-that depends on the wireless company's access, not the hospital's wifi.
RE: Medicine is now the key WiFi driver
Health and Technology