"The rapidly accelerating digitization of medicine aims to increase the quality of patient care, reduce medical errors, and maximize staff productivity and mobility."

Wireless LAN (WLAN) is a technology that perfectly supports and advances the goals of healthcare organizations. Wireless technology based on the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard is the best vehicle for extending medical information networks to where it's most needed - in the caregiver's hands at the patient's bedside.

The number of healthcare applications for WLANs are almost unlimited, including:

• Customized Healthcare solutions − Patient registration, treatment verification, prescription automation, and patient tracking (locationing)
• Mobile applications − such as staff communication badges
• Asset and Facilities Management − including materials management (bar code) and inventory tracking and locationing
• Public Broadband Service − Secure, QoS-optimized services for patients and visitors

The Unique Challenges of Healthcare

What makes the healthcare environment so demanding?

• Highly mobile caregivers need to perform information-intensive and time-sensitive activities throughout a campus-wide operation.
• Building layout of hospitals poses a physical hurdle that can be terminal for WLANs.
• The healthcare industry must comply with highly stringent requirements for privacy of electronic information, such as HIPAA and the European Union Privacy directives.
• A hospital's core mission requires maintaining a balance between highly mission-critical medical applications and key administrative functions.

Extricom: WLAN Architecture Built for Healthcare

CORE REQUIREMENTS		EXTRICOM UNIQUE VALUE
Mission-Critical Communications: The work of medical staff is time-sensitive. And the ability to have access to information at all times, everywhere, is not negotiable when patient care and safety is at stake.		Guaranteed Service: Extricom's technology is the only WLAN technology that can deliver a guaranteed and consistent level of connectivity speed, to all users, everywhere on the campus.
Information-Intensive Applications: Consider: radiology files that reach 30 to 90 MB in size; emergency rooms with high user density; voice communications that must co-exist with equally critical data transmissions.		The Highest Capacity WLAN: The Extricom solution delivers the highest WLAN capacity in the industry, achieving system bandwidth that is up to ten times that of competing solutions.
Multi-Tenant and Multi-Application Support: Many uses of Wi-Fi; one infrastructure. This is the goal. Maximum Return on Investment (ROI) is achieved if a single WLAN system can allow for co-existence of many different users (staff and visitors), a wide variety of devices, and the full range of voice, data, and video applications.		Multi-Layer System with No Performance Trade-offs: Extricom's unique channel blanket topology permits the physical segregation of different users, devices, and applications, providing maximum performance to all without trade-offs - as if they each had a dedicated system of their own.
Mobility and Wireless VoIP: What good is wireless voice communication, if users are frustrated by an inability to move?		Zero-Latency, Seamless Mobility: No handoff delays. No dropped calls. Superior voice quality and battery life. This is the Extricom WLAN built for voice over Wi-Fi.
Regulatory Compliance: EU privacy laws, HIPAA, and other regulations mandate stringent security when transmitting patient data.		Security Compliance in a Mobile World: Extricom provides maximum wireless security, while retaining full choice of client device and mobility. You can easily meet EU and HIPAA requirements, without impacting your high-performance solution.

The Future of Wi-Fi in Healthcare

The healthcare industry clearly understands the transformational effect of wireless on its operation and its patients. The question is: how confident is the IT staff that today's technologies can meet the demands of their environment?

Find out how health services organizations have succeeded with Extricom. Extricom's WLAN is specifically designed to surpass the challenges posed by pervasive Wi-Fi, providing the high-performance, resilient, and future-proof infrastructure they require.

For more information on how an Extricom WLAN can help you achieve your goals, fill out our contact form or visit the Products section of Extricom's website.