Wireless Medical Systems: Risks, Challenges, And Opportunities

Envision a wireless patient monitoring system at a large busy hospital suddenly loses connection with several patients. The staff scrambles to reconnect the patients to wired monitors while the clinical engineering department tries to figure out the problem. The cause is traced to the new digital television broadcast which has completely overwhelmed the medical system.1 Consider drug infusion pumps, active implantable medical devices, wireless nurse call units, or blood collection systems where the wireless link is slowed, intermittent, disrupted, or cannot be reliably established. Visualize a patient just home from a procedure where a new pacemaker generator was implanted because the old device battery was at the end of its life. He is awakened by an alarm that indicates battery end of life only to find that the alarm was from the old pacemaker that the patient had placed near his bed.2 These are real events. The benefits and opportunities for innovation via wireless technology are numerous and can outweigh the risks. This article focuses on key technical aspects that, if managed well, can help make the path to market and market adoption much more likely.