Doctors without wires

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How about this for a task list: install a new wireless infrastructure across three buildings including a total of 39 floors, link in Motion Computing Tablets to support an existing application, then hand all this over to doctors. Yes, doctors, those loving, polite, and techno-friendly fans of new processes. Wait, I mean M.D.s, the short-tempered, always-rushed prima donnas who really can claim anything they want is life and death. Such was the To-Do list for Adorian Ignat, Director of Information Technology, Jacobi Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

Ignat chose the HiPath 4000 product family from Siemens (via their purchase of Chantry in December 2004) over names more common in the US. I asked why, and he said, "I studied the controller chips for the wireless devices, and implementations of wireless protocols, and recent standardization evens the field quite a bit. We had a small VoIP system and network switches from Siemens, and they worked well and we received good support from them the few times it was necessary."

Since the wireless infrastructure portion cost near a half million dollars, with that much again added for installation and initial configuration, the process needed careful consideration. Even more important, however, was the way IT would be perceived by the medical users.

So far, IT's reputation remains safe. Using tablets rather than computers back at the nurses station means doctors can keep notes while speaking to their patients. Tablet scanners can coordinate medicines and patient names to eliminate those problematic "oops, we gave your sick mother the wrong pill" discussions.

Ignat hasn't closed the book on this project, as if that ever really happens in IT anyway. I asked what was next, and he said, "we may move from using mixed 802.11b and g to 802.11a, depending on the upgrades needed for the access points and tablets. 802.11n is promising, and we're hoping Siemens complies with the new standard."

We can't blame Siemens for lack of a fully standardized 802.11n product line, can we? I can say Ignat used about 300 access points, HiPath Wireless C100 controllers, a few HiPath optiPoint WL2 phones, and HiPath Wireless Manager. Even better, the new system has passed the audits on top of audits now required thanks to HIPAA.