April/May/June 2020 I 53
For BICSI personnel engaged in the design, deployment,
construction, and management of ICT systems in
hospitals and healthcare facilities, more wireless does not
mean less wire. Rather, these are environments with an
already large number of specialty systems, such as LAN,
building management systems (BMS), access control, and
video surveillance. Thus, there are significant implications
to the amount of cable and cable pathways, intermediate
distribution frame (IDF) or equipment room (ER)
requirements, data center and ER space when additional
wireless requirements are included.
Category cable to fixed workstations may be in
decline, but it is replaced by cables to wireless access
points (WAPs) or antennas. Equipment room space often
increases because of more wireless equipment, such as the
cellular providers’ base transceiver stations (BTS) and
accompanying dc power plant and battery back-up.
To keep current with the many changes impacting
hospitals and healthcare facilities, ICT designers, installers,
and consultants have a plethora of updated standards
and best practice information on which they can rely,
including ANSI/TIA-1179-A, “Healthcare Facility Telecommunications
Infrastructure,” ANSI/BICSI 004, Information
Communication Technology Systems Design and Implementation
Best Practices for Healthcare Institutions and Facilities,
ANSI/BICSI 007, Information Communication Technology
Design and Implementation Practices for Intelligent Buildings
and Premises, and Chapter 19 of the BICSI Telecommunications
Distribution Methods Manual (TDMM),
Fourteenth Edition.
WHAT ARE THE FOUR WAYS THAT MEDICAL
PROFESSIONALS USE WIRELESS SYSTEMS?
1. It is How Medical Professionals Communicate
While much of what will be discussed is definitely hightech,
one of the first ways to look at wireless in health
care is to consider how professionals work with their
devices. Obviously, they use their phones in a variety
of ways, not all together different than other fields. There
is a continued trend for mobility with being able to work
anywhere in a given environment and to know that coverage,
whether provided by Wi-Fi or cellular or another
network, is pervasive in every square foot. Waning are
the days of the nurse or other practitioner tied to
a desk phone.
The most underrated reason they use their phone is
simply to talk to someone. So simple, yet so mission critical.
The need to have a clear and uninterrupted phone
conversation can make the difference between life and
death in a healthcare environment (Figure 1). Complex
issues are often inherently better solved by having a twoway
or more phone conversation as opposed to emails or
texts that lack context and real-time dialogue and intent.
If nurses cannot hear or understand what their on-call
leader is telling them on the phone when patient matters
are discussed, the stakes could be very high. Most patients
would not want to overhear their cardiologist on the cell
phone conferring with another specialist about their treatment
with continual (heart stopping) “Can you hear me
now?” interruptions.
The good news is that carriers are deploying voice
over long-term evolution (VoLTE, pronounced “volty”)
FIGURE 1: Medical professionals use a wireless system
in their day-to-day work.
Category cable to fixed workstations
may be in decline, but it is replaced
by cables to wireless access
points (WAPs) or antennas.