Here is a good discussion on the topic of Unified Clinical Communications. Check out the article. We’ve been integrating communication solutions in hospital settings for years and Dr. Schmuland is dead-on. One thing I would add to his article is “Secure” and I’ll touch on that.
Finally!!! Vendors are waking up – There are tangible, measurable benefits to HIPAA compliant, secure communications. They all promote their features but have left it up to the hospitals to figure out the payback. Who wants to dump significant dollars into an enterprise solution without knowing the potential upside?
Still using pagers and two-way radios? Still lugging around wireless phones? It’s amazing how often we see someone with all of these devices, and a cell phone.
They are better equipped than Batman!
Not only is it a lot to carry around, the organization has to support the aging technology (with people and dollars). This is 1990’s technology that served the hospital well in its day, but it is time to look at updating the communication infrastructure. There are some real world, measurable benefits to modernizing this infrastructure: