In order to create safe and secure hospital environments, technology – and more specifically, wireless communication – provides an essential building block for improving physical security and improving hospital efficiency.
In addition to improving response time, budgeting, and serving internal customers in various departments throughout the hospital, what else can be done to create safe and secure healthcare environments?
The answer is: focus on operational efficiency and communication between staff members.
Healthcare Radios for One-to-Many Communications
Most facilities leaders know that they need radios to enable one-to-many communications. This technology provides low latency and is much faster to use than typing on a keyboard with a chat messaging app. You simply push a button and you have one-to-many communication between staff members. For example the Motorola R7 radio, which is rugged to last and loud so communication in heard the first time.
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS)
Facilities managers should also be thinking about Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), which provides benefits similar to WiFi but over the FCC-regulated frequency spectrum.
The idea behind CBRS, and its appeal to hospitals, is to provide more bandwidth and better coverage than WiFi, with fewer needs for access points (AP’s) and network infrastructure.
Motorola Solutions for Healthcare
The Motorola Solutions Nitro platform uses CBRS technology and can be acquired by hospitals either as OpEx or CapEx. With CBRS, every device requires a SIM card and authentication, similar to a private cell network.
So a hospital facilities team, working in conjunction with its IT team, runs these devices on their internal local area network (LAN) with SIM card devices. In this kind of environment, IT teams will use a Service Set Identifier (SSID) to segment visitor and patient WiFi access as secure from WiFi access used by hospital staff.
In order for two-way radios to work over that kind of infrastructure, all devices need a private SIM card, beyond their standard SIM card. As CBRS becomes more pervasive, expect to see more dual-SIM phones and tablets where you can use more than one cell network for redundancy.
Has your hospital considered Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for more bandwidth and better coverage? Share your thoughts in the section for comments below.
And if you’d like to learn how wireless communication improves physical security for hospitals, download our eBook, “Creating Safe and Secure Hospital Environments: How Wireless Communication Improves Physical Security for Hospitals (For Hospital Facilities and Security Professionals).”
