Over the past several months I have been contacted by several large IDNS (Integrated Delivery Netowrks) about looking at helping them sort through the jungle of the marketing fluff regarding Distributed Antenna Antenna Systems.
A large part of this is because the technology curve in the GSM/CDMA/Public Safety (3G/4G)space has moved so fast in the wireless world. Any parallel, simply is to look at the adoption of the i-Phone, i-Pad, and Android OS into the healthcare space. It not a evolution, but a revolution that is occuring in this mobility world.
I also feel that now the market is becoming better educated, $$ are scare, and they simply want to(have to) make the right business decision. Oh, yes some of many healthcare organizations simply are now making the decision after the fact; WLAN over DAS simply has not worked; we need to take it off the DAS. Think of the cost savings up front if someone decided through some time and effort to vet this out. Some of the technology players have expressed angst about what I attempting to discuss here. My goal simply is to enable healthcare with the best information available, help them on their technology pathway, while not spending extra $$, when it is not needed.
An independent sounding board, not tainted to "sell something" is perhaps what industry is needing to hear.
Most Healthcare IT organizations are overloaded at best, yet alone sorting through all the variants of 802.11a/b/g/n and who does what from a technology perspective definitely has been a challenge. When you now add stuff like 3G moving to 4G, support of the i-Phone and Public Safety ordinances now happening is becomes real confusing, real fast.
Some DAS infrastructure providers (integrators), make great claims to support 802.11a/b/g/n (MIMO) and yes even WMTS. The question then comes at what price point and who assumes the liability if this does not work? Will they support this in a legal agreement? We can help the IDN sort through the technology landscape, write the correct business plan, and finally draft the correct DAS RFI and RFP to hold the vendor and integrator accountable. This way the CIO will have the ability to now have the tools at hand to make the best informed technological and business decision saving perhaps countless $$ in both the short term and long term.