VOIP.com - Internet Phone Service

Hospitals are one of the most mission critical environments around. Life and death decisions hinge on efficient data flow and near-instant communication. As such, it's no great surprise that the top ranked US hospitals for 2006 all have robust IT architecture built into the facilities, instead of tacked on as an afterthought. What is surprising, perhaps, is the widespread application of cutting edge technologies that improve patient care and save hospitals money.

Telephony is difficult to implement in a hospital. Medical personnel are highly mobile, moving constantly from patient to patient throughout the course of a shift and even when staff are allocated to a particular area, they may be called elsewhere in an emergency. Traditional fixed phone systems become more a way leave to voice messages and less of a two-way communication tool. Typically, medical personnel that need to exchange information must first play an extended game of phone-tag chicken, balancing the needs of the patient to be discussed with the needs of other patients on the floor. Cell phones, which might alleviate much of the communication lag time, have been largely banned from hospitals due to the risk of electronic interference with sensitive life support equipment.

Voice over IP (voip) phone systems, on the other hand, are inherently more mobile especially when deployed over Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and have the added benefit of running over data networks that are often already part of a hospital's IT infrastructure. Many hospitals are becoming largely paperless and filmless, meaning patient records and lab results are stored electronically and imaging studies are not automatically burned to film, but rather accessible over the network. Radiology can complete a series of X-rays and make them immediately available to an entire team of orthopedic surgeons, instead of first waiting for the film to develop and then hand-carrying them to each of the surgeons. This reduces paperwork bottlenecks, increases staff productivity, and helps cut down on the amount of time a patient generally waits for healthcare decisions.

It also sets the stage for large-scale voip rollouts. Vocera's wearable communication badges are popular with digital hospitals, providing hospital staff with 2 oz. voice-activated voip phones that can be clipped to a lab coat or worn on a lanyard. Because they are hands-free, voice commands like, "Call Radiology" instantly connect the caller to whatever department they specify. Key personnel like X-ray Techs and Respiratory Therapists, who float through the floor and are not tied to a specific station, can be located quickly by support staff needing to coordinate patient care.

In addition to improving the quality of communication and cutting costs by using a single converged network instead of several stand-alone networks, voip's powerful features give doctors the option of using videoconferencing capabilities for patient consultations and collaborative brainstorming for unusual patient care cases.

Voip, and especially voip deployed over WLAN, is a logical choice for digital hospitals looking to streamline their telecommunication and data networks. It eliminates the need for medical staff to be tied to a specific workstation and reduces time spent waiting for callbacks or trying to locate personnel and equipment. The risk of medical error or injury due to communication delays is largely neutralized and overall workplace