• silicon.com
• Management
• Public Sector

By Steve Ranger, 6 October 2005 07:00

The Royal Group of Hospitals in Belfast is using a new £150,000 secure wireless network to speed up the treatment of patients and to keep better check on vital supplies.

The group, which consists of four linked hospitals, invested in the Trapeze Networks wireless infrastructure, implemented by Telindus, following a three-month pilot which began in November last year.

Paul Duffy, information systems manager at the Royal Belfast Hospitals told silicon.com the first benefit of the network has come from providing a clearer idea of the levels of vital supplies such as bandages and drugs.

He said: "We've installed the access points throughout the whole of the new building. At the moment we've just started using it for materials management."

The previous paper-based system went out of date too quickly. Staff now use wireless scanning devices to send information on stock levels directly into the hospital's systems so more supplies can be ordered when necessary.

But the group of hospitals has much grander plans than this: it is working with some Citrix technology that will enable legacy client-server applications to be delivered to PDAs. Duffy said: "Laptops are too bulky we are looking at smaller devices to do the stuff we want."

It is also piloting a 'bedhead' prescription service where doctors can send prescriptions straight to the pharmacy system through wireless tablets, speeding up treatment.

Compared to the traditional model - with doctors writing down prescriptions on paper and pharmacists downloading their handwriting - Duffy said using the tablet is faster and introduces another level of online checks and balances.

The hospitals also want to use wireless devices to replace the old-style lightbox used to display patients X-rays and other images.

Duffy said: "We get the feeling that more and more applications are going to demand this kind of access."

Further down the line, the hospital group is looking at wireless tags to locate people. "If a nurse has the keys to a cabinet it would be nice to know where they are - that would be quite useful," he said.

Duffy said at the moment there are between 50 and 100 devices on the network but the plan is to increase that to around 500 in the next six months. But security remains a key concern: "All security is taken seriously but particular care is taken with wireless," he said.

He said one reason for the sudden increase in the potential applications of wireless is down to increased use of standards: "Two to three years ago we would have been talking about much more complex ways of doing this. We are [now] seeing standard products out of the box ready to go."