News
Issue #2003 - 06 (February 2003)
(Updated Feb. 20, 2003)

APPLICATION SOLUTIONS & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Symbol Adds Nurse Call System to VoIP Phone; System Proves Itself At Chicago Hospital

Feb. 11, 2003, HIMSS, San Diego, CA -- (MobileVillage) -- Symbol Technologies has added nurse call capability to its wireless voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) NetVision Phone. The VoIP system has been shown at one hospital to improve patient response time by caregivers.

At most hospitals, when a patient presses a bedside nurse call button, a light outside the room or at the nursing station illuminates to alert available nurses in the vicinity. In some systems, a unit secretary may respond to initial requests before paging a duty nurse via loudspeaker.

The new VoIP system aims to eliminate such potential delays. The system has proven successful in a trial run at suburban Chicago's Glenbrook Hospital, consistently ranked among the US' top 100 hospitals.

At Glenbrook, five nurses armed with a VoIP phone at any given time can receive nurse call messages within a 30-bed wing of the hospital that was equipped with a Symbol Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless local area network. In addition, doctors, who may be out of the vicinity when they are paged about a specific issue, can communicate directly with a patient's assigned caregiver through one of the VoIP phones.

The Glenbrook system, being implemented by McKesson Information Solutions and the hospital's telecommunications staff, interfaces with Dukane's ProCare 6000 Advanced Healthcare Communication System. The Nortel Meridian 1 telephone switch with voice gateway server allows wireless telephony with Symbol's NetVision Phone and Wi-Fi certified wireless networks.

"We have seen an increase in patient satisfaction levels for nurse call response time using the Symbol NetVision Phone, compared to floors that don't have wireless nurse call administration," said Tom Smith, CIO of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, an academic healthcare system in Chicago's northern suburbs. "The ability to quickly locate the right clinical staff member is essential to allowing a patient unit to operate efficiently."

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory: Symbol's VoIP NetVision phone is an early entrant in the market. The VoIP technology will have to become more standardized with better inter-vendor operability before adoption will become more widespread.

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