Canadian Healthcare Technology reports that Kingston General Hospital, Kingston Ontario, has implemented a, "fully integrated wireless communications solution." Sounds sexy and exciting, doesn't it? It seems they've deployed WiFi house-wide:

KGH is the first teaching hospital in Canada to integrate wireless applications with a point-of-care computer that accommodates intravenous infusion, patient monitoring and clinical best practice guidelines in a single platform through an advanced infusion pump system. This means additional support is available to ensure patient safety. These new infusion pumps provide the care team with the most up-to-date drug information through the wireless network while also communicating with other devices to alert caregivers when a problem arises.

Interestingly, no vendor names were mentioned in the writing of this article unless they're Canadian. So the above vendor(s) shall remain cloaked in mystery. I will however guess the pump vendor above is Cardinal with the Alaris Medley smart pump - they're the only vendor to offer a patient monitoring module with their pumps.

So, in addition to wireless medical devices, KGH as also deployed (or actually extended an existing deployment) voice over IP (VoIP) wireless phones. They also have, "wireless access to their medical records system," and a "safety alerting system." The former I assume is paperless charting with computers on wheels (COWs), the latter I can only guess is an integration between their VoIP phones and infusion pumps using Emergin middle ware (besides the fact that Alaris uses Emergin for this capability, they mention that they have the option of integrating their nurse call system with their VoIP phones, another Emergin capability).

TravelNet Technologies comes in for a mention and quote (along with Bell Canada who designed and installed the network) about their ability to offer patients and visitors Internet access through the WLAN. This is no great shakes as there are numerous network appliances that provide this network service - unless TravelNet is helping the hospital charge for Internet access, which takes all sorts of backend infrastructure.

All in all a pretty cool deployment, if scandalously shy of, you know, facts and details and stuff.