2019 Wireless Healthcare Trends, Don’t Get Left Behind
In order to keep up with competition and provide great patient care, your organization must be connected within the wider spectrum of medical organizations around you. You need to be able to instantly send records of patients who are being transferred between facilities. In addition, your doctors can benefit from access to an infinite wealth of medical information relevant to their current patient load.
With the proliferation of wireless healthcare, healthcare professionals and organizations do not even have to be tethered down into a traditional infrastructure in order to be connected. As 5G moves into full commercial acceptance, the potential for connection between companies in all industries, especially healthcare, will expand exponentially.
5G
New medical innovations such as wearable devices, remote robotic surgery and secure online consultations require the cutting edge infrastructure that 5G is bringing to the marketplace. Ericsson’s report the “5G business potential” predicts that 5G will bring healthcare a new $76 billion market by 2026.
Wireless technology in hospitals represents a new level of customer service in healthcare as well. Virtual reality will be used in online booking, medical training, telemetry and the real time management of data. The greatest opportunities will be created in the patient applications that are going to be utilized away from the traditional hospital.
The 5G that is coming in 2019 will bring a bigger router for commercial mobile devices as well. Wi-Fi networks will be exponentially improved, giving new wireless technology in hospitals the ability to easily connect with BYOD patients who invest in wireless healthcare devices.
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Medical organizations will also have a new way of dealing with performance issues. The average hospital will soon have the next generation of 802.11b/g/n/ac/ax and Gigabit Ethernet. However, the true upgrades will not come from simply enhancing the amount of space for new information within a system. Brute force will fall second to intelligence in terms of network performance as machine learning, AI and software defined networks come to the forefront.
Software defined networks have more flexibility than traditional networks. Add the intelligent routing into the picture and you have a much more modern, efficient network that can manage the data that is coming in.
WPA3 and Wi-Fi Security
WPA3 is making Wi-Fi security much simpler. Delivering enhanced cryptographic for finance, government, medicine and other data markets that are more sensitive. WPA3 also improves authentication, increasing internal security and simplifying tiered security for large scale operations. The Wi-Fi enhanced open certification that companies like Aruba are investing in provide stronger encryption and simpler IoT security configuration. When working together, WPA3 and newer technology advancements provide the ability to greatly improve data privacy in medical organizations of all sizes. This can be done while keeping open public networks easy to use, even in open public networks without user authentication – such as stadiums, coffee shops and airports.
Taking Advantage of Experience
Now that the IoT is also becoming an essential part of commercial medical practice, clients are expecting more robust and connected digital experiences. No longer will end users put up with any disconnect between patients and staff when they have only to move their entire infrastructure to a new provider with a couple of phone calls. New experiences that will soon be par for the course include digitally assisted patient care (like aruba wayfinding), location based applications for mobile devices and user aware business meeting rooms. However, the companies that improve their infrastructure with these innovations today will have a huge competitive advantage.
The future of wireless healthcare technology will be more engaging and consumer friendly. All technologies will streamline the execution of work while making all patient facing functions easy. The network is the edge of the connection between people and the IoT in this world, and hospitals will need to partner with experienced teams in order to build a technology baseline you can rely on.
IT, whether in the cloud, managed or in house, must be able to deliver higher levels of service at a consistent pace, because healthcare is a growing industry. Networks must be state of the art, and the IT staff must be able to anticipate any problems proactively.
The world of wireless will continue to evolve and move forward, especially in the healthcare industry. Any medical organization that wants to do business with savvy clients in the future will need to keep up today. Systems must be constantly updated so that a company never loses touch with the digital mainstream. If it does, it will have quite a hard time catching up. Moreover, the type of patient care that a medical organization can provide moving forward will rely heavily on the type of technology that organization has access to.
Bill Flatley, Field CTO for Healthcare
Bill is responsible for technical strategies and recommendations for Comport’s Healthcare clients. His extensive experience includes four healthcare systems in leadership roles supporting Clinical Applications, Digital Health, and Office of the CIO as the primary liaison between IT and the business.
