It’s well known that medical facilities of all kinds are becoming increasingly digital. From single-doctor offices to large clinics, pharmacies, and hospitals, as well as continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) and long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) facilities, everyone is deploying wired and wireless networks to serve doctors and nurses, support staff, business users, residents, visitors, and first responders.
The Wi-Fi services that have become ubiquitous in coffee shops, airports, hotels, and even grocery stores have come to be expected in medical facilities as well, and facilities are responding by making significant Wi-Fi investments.
However, medical facilities have special wireless-connectivity needs that most other businesses don’t. Consider:
With the increasing use of wireless connectivity by doctors, nurses, staff, and even medical devices, Wi-Fi service must offer 100% coverage and near-100% reliability.
Medical records are increasingly electronic and shared among multiple devices, both wired and wireless, in many medical facilities. Wi-Fi systems in these facilities must meet stringent HIPAA security standards to protect patient medical information.
For these reasons and more, consumer or commercial-grade Wi-Fi just won’t cut it in medical, senior living or continuing care facilities.
Medical-Grade Wi-Fi®
To meet these more-demanding requirements, HealthSignals designs and implements Medical Grade Wi-Fi® systems for CCRCs, ALFs, SNFs and LTPAC facilities. These systems are engineered for the diverse needs of senior-care facilities. Medical-grade Wi-Fi brings these facilities many advantages, such as:
- Better coverage: Whereas a Wi-Fi system for an office, factory, or warehouse might provide 95% coverage of the floor space, Medical Grade Wi-Fi® guarantees 100% coverage over every square inch of your facility, with no dead spots and no dropouts as a mobile device moves from one area of the building to another.
- Higher signal strength: Medical Grade Wi-Fi® signals are 56% stronger than enterprise-grade signals, ensuring robust connectivity throughout the facility.
- Greater capacity: Not only does a Medical Grade Wi-Fi® system enable more devices to connect, but it also enables prioritization of mission-critical devices and users to ensure they always get access no matter how many devices are competing with it.
- Tighter security: Medical-grade Wi-Fi® meets the highest standards of security for comprehensive HIPAA compliance.
Better reliability: A medical facility cannot tolerate downtime in its wireless network. HealthSignals’ Medical Grade Wi-Fi® systems are engineered for redundancy, so that no single failure can compromise connectivity. The result is guaranteed uptime over 99.9%.
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Medical-grade Wi-Fi for Continuing Care Retirement Communities and Long-Term Post-Acute Care Facilities
One Wi-Fi System, Multiple User Types
A further advantage of Medical Grade Wi-Fi® is that one system can be segregated into multiple subsystems to meet the needs of different classes of users. Medical devices can communicate with one subsystem, facility staff can use a different subsystem, residents yet another, and visitors another still.
Each subsystem is optimized for the different needs of each user type. Medical devices need high reliability, whereas the residents’ subsystem might be optimized for streaming media and web surfing. Each subsystem is segregated from the others so that no users have access to systems or resources they shouldn’t have.
Future-Proof Your Wi-Fi
Is Medical Grade Wi-Fi® worth the extra planning and cost? Absolutely—not only in terms of your current requirements, but in meeting the shifting needs brought about by changing demographics, emerging technologies, and more-stringent regulatory requirements. A Medical Grade Wi-Fi® system has the flexibility both to meet your current needs and to change with your changing environment.
HealthSignals is the only Wi-Fi service provider that has the confidence to provide a Performance Guarantee. If something is not working, its is fixed at their cost, not the customers.
Contact HealthSignals today to learn more.