Comments on: Handhelds and Healthcare Innovation

Some one please correct me if I am wrong but...

I belive most MODERN, (i.e. purchased within the past 3-5 years) hospital equipment is shielded farily well from cellphones, PDA's and such...

I guess the problem is that most equipment is OLDER and not shielded and/or the hospital admin doesn't want to take a chance of a patient "coding" as you check your email!!

802.11b frequencies have no significant adverse effects on hospital equipment that I can tell. We've had such a wireless network in our hospital for some time now, and if it significantly interfered with pumps, ventilators, etc. everybody would have been dead a long time ago. I can even (briefly) see the network with my iBook and Airport card, but it uses some funky encryption where it just "disappears" after a minute or so. Obviously not using WEP.

I am a nurse and worked for several years as a registry and travel nurse. Therefore, I have worked at quite a few hospitals. I have come to the conclusion that wireless devices do not adversly effect medical equipment... although I can't say the other way around is true (MRI). I've seen MANY hospitals using consumer wireless devices themselves. I've seen 802.11b used on laptops for gathering information from patients by registration clerks. I've seen cordless phones (47Mhz, 800Mhz and 2.4Ghz) that could be purchased anywhere being used. In the hospital I'm an employee at, we have those infamous signs with a picture of a radio and cell phone with a red circle and stripe through it, yet security and engineering use standard radios that are of pretty crappy quality. Being an ER nurse, I deal with people who were not expecting to be where they are and need to make arrangements and other plans with work or family members. Unless someone is irritating me, I will NOT tell them that they can't use their cell phone in the hospital. I have seen many co-workers (mostly day-shifters) yell at people in an unfriendly manner, telling them they can't use their cell phone in the hospital and point out those signs. I find that rude and I won't do it. I am considered the technology guru in the hospital I'm at, staff (nurses, doctors and anyone else) come to me for technology advice, yet when I try to tell them that wireless devices are of no real harm, they argue with me. I explain that the frequency band of medical wireless devices are different from consumer bands, and that I have NEVER seen any interference. I've given demonstrations to prove my point, yet they still argue. They only thing I've EVER seen that was unusual was when I put a radio right up next to a CRT monitor and the picture became distorted. Once degaussed, the monitor was normal again. I showed that using a magnet, which we keep around for pausing some pacemakers, did much worse damage.