Drivers for Wi-Fi adoption in hospitals
In the last decade, hospitals have made significant investments in wireless technologies to improve:
- Patient Safety by deploying connected medical devices such as smart IV pumps, smart beds, and telemetry that alert clinicians to intervene in a timely fashion.
- Clinicians’ Productivity by providing care coordination systems such as Wi-Fi phones integrated with nurse call systems, EHR access from computers on wheels, etc.
- Patient Satisfaction by providing Internet access to patients and visitors so that they can connect with friends and family and receive support from them.
But the promise of these improvements remains unfulfilled without a suitable Wi-Fi infrastructure.
Microcell Wi-Fi is the problem
Hospital Wi-Fi ecosystems comprise life-critical, mission-critical, and consumer-critical applications with each having different requirements from wireless. Wi-Fi is a shared medium and in a conventional microcell-based network the applications compete for the same resources and interfere with each other. Microcell-based Wi-Fi networks have other significant limitations, especially in highly mobile environments that make it challenging to deliver high reliability in hospital environments.
Hospitals compensate for such limitations with workarounds, such as relying on wired connectivity for Life Critical devices or overhead paging despite deploying Wi-Fi phones, or asking nurses to stop walking when they get a voice call. Such workarounds create patient safety risks, slow down clinicians, and ultimately make patients unhappy.
The Meru Uninterrupted Care Network is the solution
With the specific needs of hospitals in mind, Meru developed the Uninterrupted Care Network (UCN). UCN enables hospitals to create separate, dedicated channels for life-critical, mission-critical, and consumer-critical applications, utilizing unique RF Channel Layering technology. UCN empowers hospitals to:
- Improve patient safety and quality of care by isolating life-critical applications from all other wireless traffic
