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The wireless challenge: understanding the wireless spectrum in a healthcare facility.

Air. There’s so much of it out there. There must be plenty of space for everything, especially those little wireless signals from medical devices. But that’s not the case when physics dictates the amount of data and waveforms that can be transported via electromagnetic waves. There’s only so much space for radio waves to coexist and not cause interference between devices. Management of this airspace in the healthcare environment is a requirement in order for medical devices to be used in a safe and effective manner. Beginning in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was empowered with regulating interstate and international communications. Part of its responsibility is managing the electromagnetic spectrum needed by wireless devices to communicate. The wireless spectrum is divided up in blocks of frequencies to support different purposes. The majority of medical equipment is communicating primarily in four of these blocks. Most wireless patient monitoring systems communicate on 608-614 MHz, the 1.4 GHz region, and some manufacturers use 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. There are clinical systems that may use frequencies around 450 and 900 MHz for associated system devices. Examples of these nonmedical devices in hospital settings include pagers used with patient monitoring systems; pagers handed out to visitors and family; two-way portable radios used by hospital staff and law enforcement; and other systems that a visitor or patient might bring in.