Medical-Grade, Mission-Critical Wireless Networks [Designing an Enterprise Mobility Solution in the Healthcare Environment]

Today's healthcare environment requires an enterprise mobility solution for both patients and staff. Separate isolated networks are suboptimal from cost, management, scalability, and reliability perspectives. The wireless medical telemetry system (WMTS) does not provide sufficient bandwidth for many hospitals. Therefore, some seek to operate outside of the WMTS. Standards-based 802.11 networks with published reliability tenfold higher than conventional telemetry already meet the requirements for supporting life-critical applications. These 802.11 networks are easily supported on an enterprise scale, and they have advanced and matured to meet the needs for life-critical applications on an enterprise-wide shared network. To achieve peak performance, any network must be properly designed, installed, and validated for its intended use. To maintain peak performance, the network must be actively monitored and managed.