EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Wi Fi Transmitters in Critical Care Area

Hi

We are planning to put Wifi transmitters in our hospital.So do anybody have suggestion to use these items in critical care areas like ICU, CCU, Operation theatre, etc...Is there any minimum distance recommended from transmitters to the medical equipments in critical care area?Do these transmitters are safe in this environment?Did anybody faced any kind of interference problem for medical equipments with this transmitters?

JB

What for, exactly? For use by patients? Or some other reasons (such as these for instance)?

Meanwhile, see earlier threads.

hi
This project is done by our hopital IT dept for all wireless applications including Internet facility for all users.But they are asking Biomed Openion for critical care areas with medical equipments.

It's a fair question.

Hopefully someone will come on here and tell us all of their experiences of Wi-Fi in the hospital setting.

Meanwhile, bear in mind that Wi-Fi operates at microwave frequencies. See these Wiki articles:-

One
Two

If it was down to me I would certainly keep those transmitters (access points, hotspots, whatever) well away* from anything I considered critical. For example:-

1) Dialysis Unit
2) ICU
3) Neontal Unit
4) Theatres ... etc.

Granted that the staff might want Wi-Fi for looking at x-ray images, and the like. But that could be done in offices, and at nurses' stations, could it not?

Not so sure about in-patient wards and single patient rooms, though. If you fail to unearth any hard data, maybe it would be worthwhile carrying out some tests with (for example) running an infusion pump sitting right next to a Wi-Fi transmitter!

* Hopefully the spec sheets for the transmitters that your people are planning to install should give some sort of clues about the distances (coverage) involved.

Our hospital has extensive wifi - my computer currently shows six different networks - but I'm not sure whether the critical care areas are covered (they're not open yet). I'll try to find out.

I believe the renal unit is covered, and I'm not aware of any issues with equipment. I don't know the specifications of the transmitters however.

WiFi transmitters only emit low range RF signal and there has been extensive testing performed by various organizations including Cisco Networks.

The testing has resulted in no evidence to suggest that having a WLAN in a medical/hospital setting will/would causing harm to patient safety.

Check out http://www.ce-mag.com/archive/06/ARG/case.htm

Hi Joby,
Our IT Dept have put in Xirrus (XN4)802.11a,b,g,n WiFi AP arrarys (Access Points, mounted on the ceiling) all arround the Hospital. One area where we had a problem is the Cardiology Dept, on their Stress Test Telemetry Rx's as its Tx & Rx System is on the same 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific & Medical) Band used / shared by the WiFi. We have got the WiFi AP's currently turned off on this floor, as there is so much interference across the whole band (The Stress Testers have a Band scan facility that can be displayed, they were approx 5m's away from each other. We also suspect that WiFi AP's on the floors above and below may be causing some, albeit reduced level of interference as they are attenuated by the concrete floors. After contacting the Manufacturers of both pieces of equipment have found they could posibly coexist if the WiFi AP's were limited to using the first 3/4's of the Band leaving the Stress Test Systems to use the top 1/4.
We appear so far not to have experienced interference in other areas with Telemtry systems as the mostly work on a different frequency ie 420 - 460MHz.
hope this is of some help,

Mark

hi,

i've encounter some patient monitor connected to a central monitoring for ICU that used wifi, so i think interference would not be an issue and wifi runs on 15 different channels (i think) so try to use different channels to see with one will not cause interference...