Integra Systems, Inc., will be speaking about the changing landscape of utilizing WLAN for patient monitoring and other medical device applications. We will be presenting at the Annual AAMI meeting in Philadelphia the end of May and at the California Medical Instrumentation Association- Capitol Area/Bay Area/Northern California Chapters on June 20 and June 21.
Integra Systems, Inc. has participated in "A Roundtable Discussion" surrounding this. Please see the attached PDF.
"This article was originally published in the fall 2012 issue of Horizons, a peer-reviewed publication from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, www.aami.org. Posted with permission from AAMI. Any other distribution of AAMI-copyrighted material requires permission from AAMI.
Submitted my article for publication...www.aami.org. Here is the abstract
Validation and Verification of WLAN Medical Devices in the Healthcare Enterprise ©
v1.1 31 May 2012 – David H. Hoglund – Integra Systems, Inc. www.integrasystems.org
The quantification and qualification of the quality of service requirements for wireless medical devices as well as the provider WLAN market has been inconsistent. Until recently, there has been no valid ways of testing and validation of the quality of service requirements for WLAN enabled medical devices that will be deployed on a shared enterprise wireless network. This article will describe the test tools, validation and verification test protocols, and deployment methodologies that will ensure the safe and reliable design of WLAN enabled medical devices; but also their deployment in the provider space.
This article somewhat parallels the author’s article from IT Horizons 2008 “Wireless Broadband Management for the Integrated Healthcare Network; but it reflects current in 2012.
What are the overall drivers of change in 2012?
Virtually all medical device manufactures have embedded some 802.11 connectivity (802.11g/a) within their client devices. The “smart pump initiative” drove this in the past, but today it is all about getting that information in the EMR. However, not all embedded 802.11 client radios are the same, or is the protocol stack the same, let alone how the actual antenna element is designed into the medical device. Medical device companies have tended to think that a WLAN adapter for a medical device is just like a WLAN enabled laptop and thus they can use the same typical deployment model. However, this is not case as the majority of WLAN enabled medical devices do not have the same use model as a typical enterprise WLAN enabled laptop or wireless voice over IP phone. Taking this into account many medical device companies that do deploy their WLAN enabled medical devices in a shared wired/wireless enterprise environment may not take into account the correct or right
site design.
Integra Systems, Inc. has co-authored an article with John Elms - President of Connexall USA. It is titled "The Use of Mobile Devices to Improve Alarm Systems. It is published in Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology September/October 2011 (c) Copyright AAMI.
As most conventions this year, it seemed attendance was somewhat down, but overall the show was dominated at the entrance by the traditional companies like Philips, GE Healthcare and Draeger Medical.
Regarding the wireless space, it seemed there was the flurry of RTLS companies. The traditional WFI RTLS players like AeroScout and Ekahau, are battling it out with the likes of Centrak and Awarepoint. It is my feeling that for RTLS to have real business value, it needs to be deployed on a enterprise basis. A lot of RTLS deployments have been limited to only departmental systems. In this space there have been a lot of companies gone "poof". Again, RTLS is not about tracking IV pumps, it is about scalability, granularity, costs, and how will you deliver "real" business value.
Cisco Systems and Arubanetworks were absent, however they usually do not attend www.aami.org, only www.himss.org . In regards to the DAS (Distributed Antenna System), Innerwireless did show up. Mobileaccess by the final copy of the www.aami.org program folder was supposed to attend, but they did not show up. The new kid on the block regarding "smart pumps", was Sigma. www.sigmapumps.com. Now that they have aligned (distribution) with Baxter, it will be interesting to see if and any traction. Question where they are going with the Collegue? In this pump they claim 802.11b, going to 802.11b/g, VPN with no server, but their site shows a server. The IRDA port is used for drug library updates, and apparently to update each pump with an individual wireless profile. This should be done on an enterprise basis, and pushed out without having to touch each and every device.
Welch Allyn www.welchallyn.com did have their new AcuityLink Clinician Notifier.
When I worked for Symbol Technologies there was somewhat of a push back to carry a PDA for single applications. However in the case of Welch Allyn, this is a really cool tool. It is like carrying a central station in the palm of your hand and puts's the power of the previous Emergin platform front and center. While some prior enterprise companies have tried to push out alarms to VoIP phones with snippets of waveforms, what they have failed to realize is that this is now classified as a medical device. For the sub-acute areas where clinicians are having to respond and take of more and more patients this tends to make a lot of sense.
Finally, what seemed to me to be pretty innovative was Masimo RadNet.
This is not because Jim Welch and I go way back, it is because what they have done makes a lot of sense from a wireless and networking platform. That challenge is that rising acuity levels and an aging population requires new patient management strategies on general care floors. This requires continuous monitoring of patient oxygen levels with pulse oximetry and the ability to send clinically and meaningful alarms to the appropriate caregivers. This leads to improved patient safety and a significant reduction of unobserved sentinel events.
The Masimo Rad-87 has embedded at 802.11a/b/g and is fully compliant with WPA2 and 802.11x. Further it follows the same overall strategy as OneNet from Draeger Medical. "Share the WLAN infrastructure". As the sub-acute market is growing more and more hospitals will desire flexible solutions. However it seems that the other two "major" monitoring companies are insisting on "dedicated WLAN infrastructures". The cost of dual "WLAN infrastructures" just does not make sense in today's economic climate. Quite frankly, it never made sense. All you have to do is architect the shared infrastructure, just like you do for voice over IP. Medical devices use extremelly low bandwidth per device. Finally RadNet uses LINUX and Goolge, MYSQL, Open Source. Unique direction to potentially shorten development time, cost, and support considerations.
While I only spent Saturday, gathered a fair amount of information. Will have a complete write up on Monday.
