Healthcare Wireless and Device Connectivity

Aruba Networks New 2.0 ARM Software

It is felt that Aruba Networks is the first WLAN company that actually is helping to define a "gold standard" for a life critical mission grade wireless network for medical devices.  This has moved the OneNet approach from Draeger of which was the first step in the right direction years ago to a new level.  It also right in concert with what Dr. Baker and I put forth in our white paper published by IEEE in March/April of this year. (It is on Aruba Networks web site).  Go to www.arubanetworks.com  for the detail, however these are the highlights.

• Band steering- actively guides 802.11a/n clients and even specific applications or users, to the best available wireless channel. The result is better noise immunity, fewer sources of interference, and more available channels.
• Spectrum load balancing of which allows the APS and Mobility Controllers to dynamically shift WIFI clients to access points on channels with with available bandwidth.
• Coordinated Access
• Co-Channel Interference Mitigation
• AirTime Fairness
• Performance Protection

RFID in Healthcare Consortium Conference Call

Harry made this happen today.  Our group is on the way.

www.rfidinhealthcare.org

Biomedical Engineering Consultants, LLC

I feel honored to have known Yadin since the 1980's and continue to work with him as his business evolves.  Please go to his updated web site at www.BiomedEng.com.

Yadin David: International Humanitarian:   Many in the clinical engineering field are familiar with Yadin David, CCE thanks to his 25 years of dedication as director of biomedical engineering at Texas Childrens Hospital. Fewer know of David's efforts to improve the safety of patients in developing countries.

David regularly travels to China and South America to help those countries use medical technology more safely, and has traveled the world educating clinical engineers, says Wayne Morse, CCD.  David serves as consultant to the Pan-American Health Organization and the World Health Organization.

He has been named recipient of the 2008 ACCE Robert Morris Humanitarian Award

Capsule Tech builds out their technology expertise with McAlpine

www.capsuletech.com the leader in medical device connectivity adds industry veteran Brian McAlpine. 

Download final_capsule_mcalpine_announcement.docx

Brian McAlpine has the long marketplace leadership experience and proven success in medical device connectivity and Capsule will greatly benefit from not only his engineering excellence, but his overall holistic vision of both the point of care space as well as the entire healthcare enterprise ecosystem. Very few people can transcend both the device side, clinical side, and enterprise side at the same time.  Capsule as they move forward with their unique leadership in the medical device driver side of the business has the right person to take them to the next level in the growth of their company.

Meru Networks and Drager to Provide Reliable Patient Monitoring

Sunnyvale, CA  Sept 22, 2008.  Meru Networks www.merunetworks.com wireless networks have been verified to  deliver reliable life-critical information over Draeger's www.draeger.com patient worn monitors following comprehensive interoperability tests the two companies recently announced.  They will continue to work to ensure validation with the Infinity Delta, Gamma, and Vista series of bedside patient monitors.  Meru continues to drive market share increases in healthcare with it's virtual cell approach that provides the capacity needed for the demands of the IDN (integrated delivery network) of today.  This is not limited to simple data from (COWS), Computers on Wheels, but true toll quality VoIP (voice over IP), PAC image transfer, and now the ability to leverage this infrastructure for the paradym change of mobile patient and ambulatory telemetry monitoring. The tests that were conducted  with Draeger and Meru validaed that the M300 patient worn monitors with Meru's single channel virtual cell wireless archictecture that will deliver vital patient data to healthcare professionals in a consistent and timely manner with a guaranteed quality of service (QoS).  Meru's unique core technologies include inter-cell coordination, over the air QoS, and contention management for density, all designed to yield these important benefits to ensure a life critical application such as telemetry monitoring will work correctly in a converged data and voice model in healthcare.  These includes such features as zero handoff across APs that maintain a high-quality VoIP connections thus providing increased realiability for mission critical applications.

             

ULP set for Dramatic Growth

Wherever you look, wireless in all it's forms but especialy short-range, ultra-low power (ULP), is set to explode.  The technology will spread far beyond traditional communications and data networking sectors into the consumer, industrial, manufacturing, medical, retail, and service sectors.  ULP wireless is set for dramatic growth because it's the enabler for unobstrusive, low maintenance, low cost wireless sensors that can form star or mesh networks.  The applications for the sport, wellness, medical, industrial and domestic sectors is only limited by the designers imagination.  However, because of it's strict power constraints, ULP is beyond the reach of standards based solutions such as the current versions of Bluetooth or ZigBee.

 

 

Download NS_ULP_WQ_Q208_eR.pdf

Unique Mesh Networks for Healthcare Video Survelliance

While WLAN has been and is pervasive; there still  are needs and requirements for pervasive connectivity both inside and outside the building premise. Healthcare instituations often desire coverage where needed and often if they do not have to run cable, especially outside the more the better.  A Firetide, www.firetide.com wireless mesh network is ideal for enhancing safety and premise survelliance. The Firetide system was developed with the video market in mind. The 1.5 millisecond latency provides good video quality and the dual radios in each node can be configured to provide a maximum of 70 megabits/sec throughput. The radios broadcast at 400 milliwatts compared to about 30 milliwatts for the average laptop PC connections and at extreme ranges can provide 10 megabytes/sec over 20 miles.  The radios operate in the unlicensed 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands in addition to licensed 4.9GHz

  

WMTS and the Reality of Bandwidth for Medical Telemetry

The article that Steven D. Baker and I wrote for IEEE Titled “Medical Grade Mission Critical Wireless Networks” covers a lot ground.  However, I did want to touch on one area.  Back in the 80’s (dates me), when it was still the days of VHF and UHF (yes even go back to analog and the transition to digital and non-fade oscilloscopes), hospitals rarely had over a 100 channels.  Now the game is to provide ambulatory (telemetry), patient monitoring house wide, especially with the innovations in displays, battery life, and better overall system designs.  This means often large institutions may want over 240 channels.  Telemetry with these innovations is often the monitor of choice. The issue is with WMTS at 608-614MHz, you have 6MHz of bandwidth.  Since the modulation is GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying), the channel spacing is 25KHz. So doing the math, 25KHz into 6MHz, gives you 240, that is without any guard bands. As described in this paper “However the widest band in the WMTS spans only 6MHz. As a result, spread spectrum systems that use this band render useless nearby second-generation systems that are transmitting in the 608-614MHz band.  Other companies use the 1.4GHz WMTS bands but they suffer from a small BW (one with a 5-MHz BW, another with a 3-MHz BW,) and a prohibition of all but medical telemetry data.” Large hospitals, especially those in dense metropolitan areas continue to struggle with limitations of their WMTS systems due to restricted BW.  This is further complicated by documented cases where WMTS bandwidth had to be further restricted in some cases to only 2.5MHz, or where legal broadcast stations have cause interference, there again, causing restrictions on the bandwidth. Having less than 120 (25KHz into 120) usable telemetry channels simply is not adequate for a lot of large integrated house-wide telemetry deployments.  The M300 (Telemetry) from Draeger Medical since it uses 802.11b/g network components changes the game.  The M300 is intended to support up to 999 beds (channels) in a single network.  All the more reason for standards based networking technologies leaving WMTS in the dust.

 

 

ATT Launches Rugged Handset - Healthcare Use Model?

While the issue of using cellular phones in the healthcare environment is cooling off, there is the issue that these are consumer devices that once dropped onto concrete tend to smash into pieces.  Imagine a hard OR floor.  AT&T is going after Sprint's Nextel iDEN customers with a launch of a push to talk handset from Samsung that features a video sharing capability. The SamSung Rugby is AT&Ts first rugged Mil-Spec device and it is the only rugged wireless phone that combines Push to Talk and Video Share Calling.  Certified to Military Standard MIL-SID-810F, it will withstand dust, shock vibrations, rain, humidity, solar radiation, and altitude and temperature extremes. This is the same standard that Panasonic Toughbooks adhere to.

" Some consumer products claim ruggedization to the level of this standard. Such claims are more or less fraudulent, because the standard specifies only a method of testing and does not specify the amount of performance degradation permissible during or after being subjected to the (highly variable) test conditions. It is impossible for most of these claims to be true, because MIL-STD-810 is a test methods standard, not a performance specification. A device, for instance, cannot "comply with" nor can it be "approved." MIL-STD-810 methods are used to test compliance with, and are called out by, relevant military product specifications and are almost entirely meaningless without a specification that references such test methods and the performance which must be shown."

Official Press Release from the Healthcare RFID Consortium

Here is the official press release coming out of the meeting at RFID World in Las Vegas, NV.  It is first major step toward building the educational awareness and driving consensus of adoption throughout the healthcare vertical markeplace. Congrats to Harry and Ellen for making this happen.  Oh, yes this picture shows how keeping tabs of high value items such as pacemakers, stents, etc, in the cardiac cardiac cath lab does pay off. Brings me back to my days working in this environment.

 

Download rfidhealthcare_090408_press_release_2.doc