Medical Device Link . Wireless Technologies Find Niche in Patient Care Wireless and remote-access technologies facilitate patient data gathering in hospitals and home-healthcare environments.

Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry Changes are taking place in the way medical data are gathered and transmitted. New technologies from the computer and communications industries are being tailored into wireless systems that promise to make healthcare more effective and efficient. Most of the progress has been made on the receiving end. Palmtop PCs, pagers, and even cellular telephones have been adapted to receive radio transmissions and display patient data. But this is only the beginning. Before the end of this year, one or more wireless patient monitors—custom-made for medical use—are expected to enter the U.S. marketplace. Industry sources say they will draw their data from lightweight sensors designed to maintain patient mobility. The sensors, possibly attached to patient arms, will read vital signs and convey the data to a wireless transmitter. Data Critical's MobileView system (open, left, and closed, right) allows physicians to receive ECG waveforms remotely, off-site. These emerging technologies will join a growing number of conventional patient monitors that have been enhanced with transmitters and receivers that allow wireless links to hospital information systems. Like the current generation, the new monitors will work within the framework of existing networks. Some will use special nodes connected to the conventional hardwired networks—the Ethernet or Token Ring systems—that serve as the information backbones of hospitals and clinics across the United States. Others will use encryption and compression technologies to transmit medical data over cellular telephone networks, which then pipe the data by modem into the hardwired networks. The hallmarks of these wireless-ready systems are easy to recognize. Antennas, screwed into the walls at the ends of corridors, receive signals fired off by sensors and their associated telemetry units, and pass the data into the hardwired network. Alternatively, some antennas provide the means for accessing the network, so data can be drawn