Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1219491
April/May/June 2020 I 53 For BICSI personnel engaged in the design, deploy- ment, construction, and management of ICT systems in hospitals and healthcare facilities, more wireless does not mean less wire. Rather, these are environments with an already large number of specialty systems, such as LAN, building management systems (BMS), access control, and video surveillance. Thus, there are significant implica- tions to the amount of cable and cable pathways, inter- mediate distribution frame (IDF) or equipment room (ER) requirements, data center and ER space when additional wireless requirements are included. Category cable to fixed workstations may be in decline, but it is replaced by cables to wireless access points (WAPs) or antennas. Equipment room space often increases because of more wireless equipment, such as the cellular providers' base transceiver stations (BTS) and accompanying dc power plant and battery back-up. To keep current with the many changes impacting hospitals and healthcare facilities, ICT designers, install- ers, and consultants have a plethora of updated standards and best practice information on which they can rely, including ANSI/TIA-1179-A, "Healthcare Facility Telecom- munications Infrastructure," ANSI/BICSI 004, Information Communication Technology Systems Design and Implementa- tion Best Practices for Healthcare Institutions and Facilities, ANSI/BICSI 007, Information Communication Technology Design and Implementation Practices for Intelligent Buildings and Premises, and Chapter 19 of the BICSI Telecommuni- cations Distribution Methods Manual (TDMM), Fourteenth Edition. WHAT ARE THE FOUR WAYS THAT MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS USE WIRELESS SYSTEMS? 1. It is How Medical Professionals Communicate While much of what will be discussed is definitely high- tech, one of the first ways to look at wireless in health care is to consider how professionals work with their devices. Obviously, they use their phones in a variety of ways, not all together different than other fields. There is a continued trend for mobility with being able to work anywhere in a given environment and to know that cov- erage, whether provided by Wi-Fi or cellular or another network, is pervasive in every square foot. Waning are the days of the nurse or other practitioner tied to a desk phone. The most underrated reason they use their phone is simply to talk to someone. So simple, yet so mission criti- cal. The need to have a clear and uninterrupted phone conversation can make the difference between life and death in a healthcare environment (Figure 1). Complex issues are often inherently better solved by having a two- way or more phone conversation as opposed to emails or texts that lack context and real-time dialogue and intent. If nurses cannot hear or understand what their on-call leader is telling them on the phone when patient matters are discussed, the stakes could be very high. Most patients would not want to overhear their cardiologist on the cell phone conferring with another specialist about their treat- ment with continual (heart stopping) "Can you hear me now?" interruptions. The good news is that carriers are deploying voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE, pronounced "volty") FIGURE 1: Medical professionals use a wireless system in their day-to-day work. Category cable to fixed workstations may be in decline, but it is replaced by cables to wireless access points (WAPs) or antennas.