If this truly is the Age of Communications, no institution knows it better than the modern healthcare facility. On top of the traditional intense demands of clinical technology have been added such wide-ranging requirements as electronic medical records, wireless phones and PDAs, local area and wide area network clinical data transmission, in-room Internet access, and entertainment centers encompassing everything from video games and closed-circuit relaxation images to cable TV. Meanwhile, cable and wiring standards and technology continue to evolve. What are some of the planning, design, and maintenance issues to keep in mind when designing or upgrading cabling and wiring? Recently Contributing Editors Richard L. Peck and Barbara Horwitz-Bennett asked key participants in the design, installation, and maintenance of these vital systems for their insights.
ENGINEER
Chris Archer
Senior Telecommunications Engineer, RCDD, Brinjac Engineering Inc., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
What are some of the newer challenges involved with planning today's wiring/cabling systems in healthcare facilities?
There is tremendous pressure to install systems that can expand and allow for rapid deployment of additional backbone and/or network drops at a moment's notice in order to support mission critical applications and day-to-day administrative needs. At the same time, hospital administration is placing a lot of emphasis on patient and family satisfaction in order to compete. Patients and family of patients expect many of the same amenities they currently have at home and/or work. For this reason, many hospital lobbies and clinical areas today are similar to hotels-patients and families expect to have wireless cell phone service, Internet access, iPods playable through speakers on the TV, Playstation-type video games, and video on-demand. Then there is the forever merging/adding on of clinical and nonclinical technologies to the hard-wired and/or wireless data LAN network, such as PDAs, WiFi phones, mobile charting systems, remote monitoring systems, phone systems, security systems, phones integrating with nurse call, tracking systems, patient bed systems, IP video, imaging, and clinical data transmission. This has created a need for hospitals to have much more data drops in clinical and nonclinical areas than there used to be. In fact, TIA/EIA-1179, which was just recently released, has minimum drop count recommendations based on the level of care/type of space.
