Wade4Wireless

Healthcare Wireless Use Cases


First, in any medical matter, I have to explain something first.

What is HIPAA Compliance?

I am no expert here, so look it up. This is the information I put together based on research. However, when you’re putting systems in for healthcare, chances are good it has to be HIPAA compliant. This is no joke, so don’t take it lightly.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) required the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop regulations protecting the privacy and security of certain health information. 

Let me sum this up, this law is put in place to protect the patient’s privacy. The health information they have is for them to be shared only with those whom the doctor or patient chooses to share it with. 

So, what does this mean to you and the medical community? It means that protection of our medical history is very important and a law. It’s a civil right in the US. One with legal implications. It matters to all involved.

Now don’t think you have to look up the privacy details of all the equipment you put in. Go to all the OEMs and ask if it’s HIPAA compliant. Let them know that medical services will be running over the network. 

Years ago, I helped put in microwave links for a medical company. I had no idea what HIPAA was but I learned quickly. Luckily my coworker knew what it was and validated that all the equipment was HIPAA compliant. He made sure that it matched what the group asked for and he asked for proof in the form of a certificate. It would be a good idea for you to do the same. 

Healthcare Use cases

This may surprise you but Healthcare services rely heavily on wireless connections, and not just in the office. Tracking devices and data. In the office they have all their tablets and equipment that now connects wirelessly. Wireless connectivity has freed up the workers and patients to improve productivity and allow near real time updates. 

Think about how home monitoring systems have changed. Now someone can have a monitor at home or have their medicine tracked without a phone call, but live data assuming the patient agrees to it. Gamechanger. Now, the home thing has less to do with private networks and more to do with either in-home Wi-Fi connectivity or a carrier connecting to the device. It also comes with a ton of security and privacy issues, but let’s not focus on that right now. 

Let’s review, shall we?

  1. Tracking from Manufacturing to Office – OK, this may not seem like a big deal, but believe it or not the medical profession has to track almost anything used for the patient all the way back to the manufacturer. This is where RFID and BLE tracking become a key thing. Using IDs that the manufacturer places on each thing, let’s say a blood bag, will allow that bag to be traced back to its birthday. Why does this matter? Products could get tainted or manufacturing could be compromised. This is why tracking is a key component here. So how does this relate to private wireless? Because each location from the manufacturer to shipper to warehouse to doctor’s office should have a gateway to read the item’s specific code and trace it from the patient all the way back to its place of creation. Each location should automatically capture that data, collect it, file it, and make sure it’s secure by following HIPAA compliance. 
  2. In office or hospital live monitoring – While this is no surprise we still have to come up with a secure solution. Remember, in any medical facility we need HIPAA compliant networks. It doesn’t matter if it’s Wi-Fi, NB-IOT, or even LoRa. Security matters. This is to catch the data from each device and make sure that back at the nurse’s station it’s monitored in real time. Reliability and accuracy are key components in this equipment. Low latency should not be the problem here. 
  3. Remote patient monitoring – this is a key component for wireless coverage but it’s covered more with in-home Wi-Fi or over a carrier’s network. Not many private networks will help here because it’s at home. However, nursing homes will also need this support, so maybe that could be a target customer for you. You still need to be HIPAA compliant. Let’s call this Digital Healthcare and I see it becoming more and more important in the future. Maybe a hybrid network would be the solution here. Remote healthcare will grow and grow, the use of apps will change the way we take care of the healthy and sick. 
  4. Medical professional communication – this could be in the hospital, which should be a very secure connection. Pagers are still used for this reason. However, when the doctors, specialists, and nurses leave the facility or campus, they may be on call or need to stay connected. This is where the roaming of smartphones would be a nice use case assuming the connections can remain secure. I feel this would be an ideal neutral host solution. 
  5. Device tracking – I know you may think this could be overkill, yet hospitals misplace equipment so often it’s ridiculous. Think about what the staff is dealing with, emergencies, distractions, exhaustion, and a thousand other reasons why the location of something gets forgotten. You have to look at it from their perspective. So if we just put RFID or BLE tags on everything, we can find it quickly, or if it’s on a deadline, then we can check out those places and perhaps put sensors there so we eliminate the deadlines. This would require BLE tags on every device and hubs everywhere to sense and collect the information and a server to save the data so it can be tracked at a later time. 
  6. Patient tracking – I am shocked that they don’t do this today. There may be a privacy reason they don’t but wouldn’t it make sense to track the patient while they’re in the hospital? Many are doing this by using RFID or BLE tags that the patients wear around their necks or as bracelets. They often put them on wheelchairs but that is more about tracking the object, not the patient. 
  7. Connecting remote offices will become more important. As medical centers and hospitals want to offload patients to specialty care centers, hopefully nearby, they will want to connect those offices. It may be with fiber but having a microwave system as a backup. If you think this isn’t a thing, I have already worked on these solutions. They’re quite common. 
  8. Connecting remote expert doctors for instant monitoring. I have done this in the past with MRI specialists to allow the MRIs to be monitored in the hospitals and have an expert in a remote location monitor them in real time. This way the expert won’t have to travel from hospital to hospital to examine pictures or videos. They also cut out the costs involved in travel time and can increase their patient load beyond one hospital. 

As we look at healthcare and solutions, we have to make it cost effective yet valuable. The one obstacle could be the additional time for security. It has to be vetted as HIPAA compliant by the OEM prior to installation. 

More:

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Finally, here are some other updates.

Update on next book! I am putting together a new book on Private Wireless Networks. Hopefully by the end of January.

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