Healthcare Wireless and Device Connectivity

Small Cells and the Need for Network Capacity

How do you build out capacity....add HET Nets or Small Cells

http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/products/small-cells/#breadcrumb

Download Smallcells-infographic-v6_FINAL

Download SmallCells_Brochure_v6-lowres

Nordic Semi Conductor ULP Quarterly Newsletter

Integra Systems, Inc., has worked with Nordic Semiconductor over the past five years to help develop and integrate their low power solutions for some very unique medical device products.

www.nordicsemi.com

Please see their latest quarterly issue (Ultra Low Power) Fall 2014. The use of ANT and now BTLE is exploding around us. When you couple this communication model of your smart phone as your personal computer and gateway with BTLE..well the applications are endless. This is following the same pathway as WLAN.

Download NS_ULP_WQ_Q314_Autumn_eR

Related articles

Nordic Semi Announces nRF51 DK Arduino Compatible Board, and nRF51 Dongle with Bluetooth Smart, ANT, and 2.4GHz Connectivity

The Convergence of LPBT and the WLAN - Location Based Services

As I have expressing my views, Bluetooth 4.0 and now since it has been adopted in virtually all the mobile devices is changing the game. Hat's off to Aruba to stepping out there and making real innovation happen!

Aruba Beacons leverage Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) technology to power indoor location and wayfinding, proximity-aware push notifications, and other location-based mobile engagement services for enterprise venues.

Small, low-power wireless transmitters, Aruba Beacons broadcast radio signals at regular intervals that can be heard and interpreted by compatible iOS and Android devices equipped with Meridian-powered mobile apps from Aruba.

Put a glowing blue dot on your venue map
Take your interactive venue maps in your Meridian-powered mobile app to a whole new level using Aruba Beacons. Together, they enable your guests to see their exact location within your venue and get turn-by-turn directions to products and services that are closest to them.

Send location-based push notifications
Using real-time location data from Aruba Beacons, venues can deliver personally-relevant promotions to mobile app users that opt-in. This enables venues to deliver powerful context-aware mobile marketing campaigns that strengthen engagement and upsell more products and services.

Configure and move beacons on the fly
For management, the Aruba Beacons mobile app makes initial setup a breeze. It pulls venue-specific content from the Meridian Editor content management system so you can walk through your property to install and configure Aruba Beacons from a mobile device.
Manage beacons from the cloud

Aruba’s best-in-class Wi-Fi infrastructure makes it easy to manage Aruba Beacon settings and battery life from any location. Just plug an Aruba USB Beacon into an Aruba AP to monitor other beacons within range and send relevant management data to the cloud-based Meridian Editor.

Download SO_MobileEngagement

The Genius Behind Wireless

While I missed this a day; we have to give our regards to a beautiful and smart women that gave us the foundation of why we have the wonderful world of wireless communications today.

It would have been her 100th birthday yesterday. As a side; she never received any $$ from this. (See attached patent). While working at Symbol in 1999-2001 I featured her in my presentations to www.aami.org. Note: Symbol, became Motorola Solutions, now most recently becoming Zebra was the company that commercialized Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum. (Think bar code scanners). They were the original guys (company) behind the Wi-Fi Alliance and started off the Wi-Fi revolution as we noted. In 2000 while working at Symbol I worked with Welch Allyn that was the "first company" that had incorporated spread spectrum for a patient monitor. This was actually frequency hopping spectrum spectrum before 802.11b (direct sequence), came got approved in 1999. Below is an excerpt copied from an announcement on Lamarr.

HEDY LAMARR, screen actress, was revealed today in a new role, that of an inventor," reported The New York Times on 1 October 1941. "So vital is her discovery to national defense that government officials will not allow publication of its details."

The invention was not her first. Lamarr previously experimented with cola-flavored bouillon cubes for homemade soft drinks. But her new idea, which officials would only say was "related to remote control of apparatus employed in warfare", would become a signal innovation of the century, the technology now underlying cellphones and Wi-Fi. Expertly explaining the genesis and consequences of Lamarr's invention, in Hedy's Folly, Richard Rhodes transforms a surprising historical anecdote into a fascinating story about the unpredictable development of novel technologies.

When Lamarr turned her attention to national defense, following the tragic sinking of a ship full of refugees by a German U-boat in 1940, she knew far more about armaments than most movie stars. Before arriving in Hollywood, she had been married to the Austrian munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl, who supplied the Axis powers. Dining with Nazi generals, Lamarr not only learned about the latest submarines and missiles but also the problems with them: notably the challenge of guiding a torpedo by radio, and shielding the signal from enemy interference.

Her insight was that you could protect wireless communication from jamming by varying the frequency at which radio signals were transmitted: if the channel was switched unpredictably, the enemy wouldn't know which bands to block. But her ingenious "frequency-hopping" idea was just a hunch until Lamarr met fellow amateur inventor George Antheil at a Hollywood dinner.

Notorious in the music world for avant-garde compositions featuring airplane propellers and synchronized player pianos, prior to the war, Antheil had galvanized Paris, and incited riots, with his cacophonous Ballet Mécanique. He had also attempted to invent an open-top pianola with which to teach basic keyboard technique. It flopped, but this background came in handy. To realize Lamarr's idea, Antheil proposed coordinating transmitter and receiver by controlling the switching between channels with two identical piano rolls running at the same speed.

At least that was the analogy - and the analogy was what sunk their plan. When the US navy rejected their invention, Antheil remarked: "My God! I can see [them] saying, 'We can't put a player piano into a torpedo!'" The usefulness of their idea went unrecognized until the 1950s, and unimplemented until the 60s.

By then the operating premise, known as spread-spectrum, had applications far beyond torpedoes and frequency jamming. Information theory proved that a signal was made more robust - and could be transmitted more efficiently - if spread across multiple frequencies. The problems introduced by new technologies gave an old idea new salience. Today, for example, frequency hopping prevents cellphone conversations from crisscrossing.

Download US2292387-2

IOT and Integra Systems, Inc.

Integra Systems has been at the forefront of IOT (Internet of Things), as far back as 2000 when we worked with a company in Sweden. It was custom application for EMS use.
This area has come a long way and is where all the right pieces have come together.

We have continually worked with companies in new solution development and are developing solutions targeted at multiple vertical markets.

Download Solution_fieldservice_web-2

Download CLP.03-Connection-Efficiency-Guidelines-Version-1.0

ASCOM Alarm Fatigue and the Right Device

While there are a myriad of systems out there in the marketplace today that are addressing this...the reality is you need a communications methodology and device that actually works!

Consumer devices (smart phones), were not designed for the enterprise environment. Folks out there fail to forget that the radio and the algorithms were designed for hotspot environments; not the high mobility requirements demanded in healthcare. Put in a low cost WLAN radio...and well. That is why they have "dropped connections" via WLAN voice over IP calls. Finally, WLAN radios are power hogs, so does that consumer device use PSP modes to conserve power?...think not. So, asking a clinician to charge the "smart phone" once a day or maybe even during a shift...just another thing that get's in the way of patient care.

Next, you have to consider the context of how you are going to actually use the device. For a nurse to pull this out of his/her pocket, then scroll down to something...probably is not the best use model. Cannot see the rationale of trying to access the EMR on a tiny, tiny screen. Finally, devices like this will be dropped, run over, etc. It has to be bullet proof and yes waterproof. (think of the term IP56...) Been in the clinical environment for many years...stuff get's destroyed.

So hat's off to ASCOM to actually making an device that solves and addresses the use model. To a care giver, it looks like a combination of legacy paging/notification being brought into 2014...while at the same time being able look and feel of an intelligent communication device.

This is truly demonstrating...versus talking...."workflow improvements"!

http://www.ascommyco.com/en/