The Way We Work will Never be The Same becuase of wireless VOIP

Nowhere is instant communication—anytime, anywhere—more mission-critical than in healthcare institutions with large numbers of mobile staff scattered throughout the buildings. A cardiac patient in the ER needs a room set up with heart monitor.

A patient in surgery needs two more units of blood. Healthcare institutes are constantly striving to improve the flow of information between doctors, nurses and clinical technicians so they can make timely decisions about patient care—and wireless technology is rapidly becoming a key component of the IT infrastructure facilitating that goal.  Yet many wireless technologies create almost more problems than they solve.

Wireless phone systems are typically not hands-free and require memorizing a long list of extensions. Cell phones, if allowed at all due to potential interference issues, may experience degraded signals inside buildings and near medical devices.

Paging systems can be slow and disruptive, while twoway radios use frequencies that are often open to eavesdroppers creating privacy issues.   Increasingly, hospitals are looking to secure, flexible and less intrusive communication systems that can be used throughout any wirelessly networked building or campus, and Vocera Communications has the perfect prescription.

 The Vocera Communications System is a wireless platform that provides hands-free, voicecontrolled communications throughout any 802.11b-networked building or campus. Vocera software establishes and manages calls using VoIP on a wireless local area network. Users are able to speak to each other using Vocera Communications Badges that connect through the network.  The badges weigh less than two ounces each, can be shared among employees or shifts and can easily clip onto a shirt pocket or attach to a lanyard. They operate with simple voice commands so staff can call by name, title, function or group. “Vocera allows you to call someone based on their name or their functional responsibilities,” explains Brent Lang, vice president of marketing at Vocera. “As a result, a clinician might be able to say, ‘Get me a pediatric nurse,’ and the system can look up who is currently available and connect him to the appropriate pediatric care nurse.”  

Conference calling and group messaging through the Vocera system facilitates team-wide announcements, and calls can be made to and from the badge to telephones. The feature-rich, centralized software enables staff members to instantly communicate, dramatically reducing response times among clinicians and other support staff, streamlining communication processes and saving valuable time in patient care.  “Vocera has reduced the amount of overhead paging by about 94 percent, according to studies we’ve conducted in one implementation,” Lang says. “We’ve also seen tremendous productivity improvements—up to 3,400 hours per nursing unit per year by allowing patients and nurses and other clinicians to speak more directly with each other.

By making communication more effective, nurses are able to get back to what they really enjoy doing, which is caring for patients and interacting with patients and their families.”  St Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., has also seen huge improvements in operational efficiencies and internal communications as a result of implementing the Vocera Communications System. Operated by the Sisters of St Francis, the hospital grew from a 15-bed converted dance hall in 1869 to a 431-bed comprehensive modern medical facility that serves 16 counties in central New York.  

Recently, administrators at St Joseph’s had become increasingly frustrated with the slowness and inefficiency of traditional phones and intercoms, and were concerned that future nursing shortages might affect the quality of patient care over the next decade. So they looked for a modern communication system that would save time, provide a quieter, more relaxed environment for patients and optimize the time staff spent caring for patients.   Only one system offered the degree of flexibility and automation that the hospital needed— Vocera. With assistance from the Integrated Technology Services team at IBM Global Services, a Vocera Communications System was integrated into St Joseph’s enterprise PBX system so employees can communicate quickly and effectively with each other ‘hands-free’, and make and receive outside calls as well.   Since the new system was introduced, the hospital has been able to significantly reduce the number of phone calls, pages, voice mails and return calls. The overhead intercom rarely disturbs patient sleep, and doctors and nurses now spend more time with patients, instead of wasting time trying to track each other down in the corridors.  Hospitals like St Joseph’s are not the only beneficiaries of Vocera’s ability to connect people and resources instantly.

Retail outlets such as large department and outlet stores, libraries and hospitality venues can all benefit by being on a single system that allows mobile staff to communicate and share information easily.

Some retail units and hospitals are taking advantage of the system to provide real-time translation services to customers and patients as well.  “Vocera operates over a standard WiFi network, and many small businesses, hospitals and retail environments are already installing WiFi for other applications,” Lang explains.

“Vocera can be installed on top of that existing WiFi network, allowing customers to leverage their existing investment in wireless infrastructure. Plus, the system is owned by the customer so there are no recurring usage fees—IT administrators have clear visibility into what their investment is going to be, and they don’t have to worry about people overusing the system and racking up large bills.”

 And with communication processes typically working five times faster after a Vocera implementation, Lang says, many businesses are seeing the system pay for itself within just a few months.   But the future doesn’t stop there. Since the system has all the flexibility of a software application, many organizations are integrating it with other software applications. For instance, when the Vocera system is integrated with a customer relationship management program in a hotel, work orders can be automatically sent out to the right worker.

If a hotel guest requests clean towels, the system can immediately send a message to the appropriate porter. This can reduce service response time and greatly improve customer satisfaction.  Lang is confident that the applications for wireless VoIP will continue to grow. “One of the most exciting areas that we think moving forward is the idea of using voice to access data and information from a centralized database,” he says. “That’s an exciting area of growth in the future.”