Wi-Fi

Clear Choice Healthcare, a health care management company, has selected Ruckus Wireless’ advanced "Smart Wi-Fi" products and technology for its nine skilled nursing and assisted living facilities throughout Florida. Clear Choice also operates a skilled nursing facility in Denver, which will also utilize the Ruckus system.

U.K.-based Airetrak has enhanced its ResourceView information solution with new Wi-Fi Temperature Monitoring functionality. The new ResourceView Wi-Fi Temperature Monitoring functionality is able to reliably record the temperature of all refrigerators and freezers, as well as blood or drugs boxes in transit.

St. Trudo Hospital in Belgium is extending its use of the AeroScout Healthcare Visibility solution to include tracking the location of patients and Wi-Fi devices. Central among the tracked Wi-Fi units are Dräger’s Infinity M300 patient-worn vital signs monitors.

Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC), a 370-bed regional hospital in Dothan, Ala., is upgrading its Ekahau Wi-Fi-based RTLS to include campuswide monitoring of its refrigerators and freezers.

As wireless LAN technology becomes more densely deployed within enterprise environments, more hospitals and other organizations are using Wi-Fi real-time location systems (RTLS) to improve everything from network security and performance management to asset tracking.

Trapeze Networks' chief strategist in the office of the Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Gast, said earlier this month that the final vote to ratify 802.11n could take place as early as Sept. 11, exactly seven years after the initiative began. Trapeze is touted as the first company to introduce NonStop Wireless. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company's products are optimized for users requiring mobility and high bandwidth, such as healthcare.

Akron, Ohio-based Summit Data Communications, a provider of embedded Wi-Fi solutions for mobile computers and business-critical mobile devices used in hospitals and other settings, today announced the availability of two radio modules that exploit the little-used 5 GHz frequency band for more reliable connectivity. The modules, which will be certified for Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX) Version 4 next month, allow today's mobile devices to exploit the capabilities of enterprise Wi-Fi infrastructure products that support the draft IEEE standard of 802.11n.

ABI Research is saying worldwide sales of Wi-Fi-enabled health care products will hit $4.9 billion in 2014, an increase of nearly 70 percent over 2009 levels. The projected boom is based on the $20 billion of stimulus funds earmarked for the digitizing of medical records and health care reform.

University Hospital, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University, has implemented a Wi-Fi-based RFID system from AeroScout to locate equipment at its emergency operative centers. The hospital also uses the system to track temperatures of pharmaceuticals and tissue samples stored in 100 refrigerators.