SAN FRANCISCO – "I see healthcare as in many ways the torture test for networking," said Kiren Sekar, director of marketing at San Francisco-based wireless firm Meraki.

 

The security environment in hospitals "is the most critical, with the biggest consequences if you screw up," he said. "You've got a high volume of non-employees accessing the network. You're really pushing the mobility issue, with people using carts on wheels and expecting to be able to move between rooms. It takes the types of challenges you see in other types of networks and pushes them to the extreme."

 

Next to significant – sometimes life-or-death – issues like those, it’s easy to view a patient’s ability to play Angry Birds on an Android as frivolous. But it's not. Nowadays, nearly everyoneowns a smartphone, tablet or laptop. And when they're laid up in the hospital, with lots of time on their hands, people expect to be able to use them.

 

Wireless uses have become "the norm," said Kelley Carr, president of the custom solutions group at Manchester, N.H.-based wireless implementation firm CSI. "Consumers are demanding that, no matter where they go, they get coverage."

 

That poses big problems for hospitals, where critical functions are riding on robust and reliable wireless networks. According to a study this past June from ABI Research, Wi-Fi adoption in healthcare grew more than 60 percent over the previous 12 months, in both wireless local area network (LAN) and Wi-Fi real-time locations systems (RTLS) deployments. Double-digit growth was predicted for at least the medium term.

Add in a few hundred smartphones and netbooks to the myriad clinical IT strains on those networks, and the challenge becomes apparent.

 

"Demand has changed from purely providing technology for the providers themselves and trying to find infrastructure that will work for doctors and nurses," said Sekar, to enabling patients "to get online and watch Netflix from their iPad while in the hospital bed or check their e-mail from the waiting rooms."

Clearly, he said, that "can really be challenging on an IT staff."

 

Meraki tries to help out by making wireless infrastructure "as easy to deploy as possible, and make it really simple and integrated. … The way we do that is to put the intelligence of the network in the cloud."

This has several benefits. With "data centers and servers monitoring the hospitals networks," he said, it offers a lot of discretion on behalf of IT departments. "In five minutes you can turn on (and off) guest access, or say, 'I want to limit video streaming and gaming, and block adult content.'"

 

Hospitals should be able offer that guest experience while avoiding network slowdowns and exposed security vulnerabilities, said Sekar, because "the ability to get online with your Android or your laptop is for many people almost like an entitlement now, rather than a luxury."

 

Other wireless vendors are also seeking new and innovative ways of addressing these shortcomings. In March, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Meru Networks was awarded two patents for solutions aimed at congestion in device-dense wireless LANs. When mobile wireless device users add high-bandwidth video and data applications onto an already burdened Wi-Fi network, significant reduction in network speed, dropped connections and potential network collapse can result.

 

As mobile devices proliferate, company executives say, Meru's new technology enables the delivery of critical enterprise applications at the optimal transmission rate for each device, taking into account network congestion, loss rate of the channel and the distance and mobile or stationary state of the device.

So-called "Wi-Fi meltdowns," said Joe Epstein, senior director of technology at Meru, "are caused in large part by wireless devices doing the wrong things when the network gets congested, even if they do the right things in lightly loaded environments. As the number of wireless devices such as iPads and smartphones converge on a given area, Meru's innovative signal-to-noise rate adaptation intelligently restores airtime fairness – overcoming the flaws associated with 802.11n implementations and avoiding a Wi-Fi meltdown."

It's hard to overstate what that means for patient satisfaction. Sekar said a a friend who recently spent two weeks in a hospital was on her laptop "constantly," availing herself of the time-passing opportunities afforded by Facebook, Netflix and more.

 

"It made the difference between it being an unpleasant experience and a really, really unpleasant experience," he said.