Welsh hospitals deploy Cisco wireless

Clinicians at the Princess of Wales Hospital and Neath Port Talbot Hospital, part of the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg (ABM) University NHS Trust in South Wales, are now able to access information about their patients’ bedsides using a new Cisco wireless Local Area Network (LAN).

Using the wireless LAN, clinicians can now access information about their patients electronically using wireless carts with PCs, laptops, and tablet PCs, which are helping clinicians spend more time with patients and deliver treatment faster.

Carl Mustad, assistant director of information technology at the ABM University NHS Trust, told E-Health Insider: “We wanted the opportunity to modernise the delivery of patient services and realised the ability to work wirelessly would achieve this. With the nes LAN, clinicians will have immediate access to clinical information at the point of care. In the Emergency Department for example, consultants will use a tablet PC to look at a patient’s pathology test results while at the patient’s bedside.”

Clinicians are now recording clinical information wirelessly during the ward rounds, including medication verification and electronic drug ordering, helping to build up the discharge summary information as it happens. Patients should no longer have to wait for documentation before they are discharged.

This information is then transmitted electronically to general practitioners, providing them with timely and legible information as soon as the patient is discharged from hospital.

Mustad said: “The drive to improve efficiency at Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University NHS Trust is all about making information available at the right time to the right person, improving patient care and providing safer processes.”

The trust is now looking to extend the use of this wireless infrastructure to track and monitor devices, such as ECG machines and infusion pumps.

A pilot by the Electronic BioMedical Engineering department at the Princess of Wales later this month will track the location of around 40 devices using RFID tags.

Mustad said: “We want to test how well this tracking works in the new wireless environment. It should help save enormous time for staff who usually have to look for devices, now they can simply check a database.”

The trust is now looking at deploying Cisco fixed and wireless networking at the rest of its hospitals, community clinics and GP locations to help make healthcare systems and information more readily available to clinicians.

They will also look at using the Cisco infrastructure platform to deploy additional services such as voice over IP to replace hospital paging systems, and RFID to improve bed availability management and offer better protection for vulnerable patients.

“Taking advantage of network technology helps healthcare providers of all sizes to improve collaboration and decision making among caregivers and experts, leading to benefits such as cost-effective quality care, easier access to patient information, more productive workflows, fewer medical errors and redundancies, and faster diagnosis and treatment,” said Terry Espiner, Cisco’s regional sales manager for healthcare.

He added: “The use of Cisco wireless networking at the Princess of Wales hospital will help ensure that doctors and nurses have the right information at the right time to give patients better and faster healthcare.”

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