I have been around healthcare ( in all the clinical domains), medical devices, even in cardiac pacing/electrophysiology, and IT technology from the 80's and have witnessed from my days at Symbol Technologies 1999-2001, the advent of WIFI (802.11b), and the whole BCMA, Bar Code Medication Administration era, even early on with VoIP...essentially I was in the thick of this designing applications and well as engineering and deploying indoor and outdoor wireless deployments. Well today, we see 802.11b/g/a, forthcoming n, everywhere and people are getting real value from the applications (because the infrastructure is there and it is reliable..in most cases,) it all depends on a lot of variables of the competency of the designer and the actual installation. WIFI was deployed first in limited areas, not everywhere, but as costs came down, the value quotient for the need for pervasive mobility went up the food chain. It is now standard practice to light up the entire building, period. Now witness (DAS), distributed antenna systems. Companies like MobileAccess have gotten real traction because their active based design provided real value with multiple services...cost effectively. So at the end of the day, I would think that most institutions simply want and need pervasive WIFI coverage as well as inbuilding public safety, cellular, and PCS coverage. Just not why make this a standard design practice? You would not think of erecting a new building without centralized HVAC, why not make WLAN, Public Safety/PCS/Cellular a standard part of this architecture? Now switch to RTLS. Mentioning Symbol, I was there lock in step with WhereNet, and the early 802.11b (WIFI) RTLS tags from several companies. That was over eight years ago. Why is this not deployed in every single hospital across all care areas? It is my opinion that it is too expensive from the enteprise requirement (density of AP(s)), tag cost, and the in-ability to obtain sub-room accuracy (this is what you need in healthcare, not on on a factory floor). Only when you have the ability to know all the equipment, care givers, and patients within their care zone can you actually provide the ability to drive new process improvement. This cannot happen today unless you have pervasive coverage. I have witnessed all the other technology offerings, UWB, Zigbee, IR, Ultrasound, 900MHz. The real need today is for the RTLS technology for healthcare to be deployed "everywhere", across the healthcare enterprise, not just in a "department'...cost effectively without a ton of added WIFI infrastructure...it has to work down to sub-room accuracy, and work within the multi-path environment of healthcare. Then you can start driving all kinds of new work flow inprovement algorithms. I know this from first hand experience with my wife went into surgery a few weeks ago. They used ultrasound tags to track her from surgery to PACU, (this was great in one clinical domain) but I could not find her for about 30 minutes after she left PACU, because you guessed it they only deployed RTLS in surgery and PACU, not across the enterprise. Those RTLS companies that can provide the "holistic enterprise senses" in this model will be able to follow the footsteps of the pervasive WLAN model and now DAS model unfolding. See the latest enterprise testing model with www.veriwave.com for 802.11n. A lot of good information. Do not see anytime soon the need or requirement due to packet requirements for 802.11n for medical devices, however it may be of a benefit via DAS of MIMO for WMTS. (provide the diversity requirements to overcome multipath of which is not really present in current DAS solutions, without a lot of added cost). Power issues will be perhaps an issue for the mobility requirement, i.e. POE as described.
