Implementation Issues for Mobile-Wireless Infrastructure and Mobile Health Care Computing Devices for a Hospital Ward Setting

• DOI: 10.1007/s10916-009-9264-y
• Publication Date: 2009-03-10T10:14:59Z
• Authors: Liza Heslop; Stephen Weeding; Linda Dawson; Julie Fisher; Andrew Howard
• Keywords: School of Nursing and Midwifery; Victoria; Hospitals, Public; Point-of-Care Systems; communications; healthcare; 610; 1110 Nursing; Pilot Projects; infrastructure; Local Area Networks; 9405 Work and Institutional Development; mobile-wireless; 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Computers, Handheld; Physical Sciences and Mathematics; Hospital Information Systems; Humans; ResPubID17204; device; Hospital Units

mWard is a project whose purpose is to enhance existing clinical and administrative decision support and to consider mobile computers, connected via wireless network, for bringing clinical information to the point of care. The mWard project allowed a limited number of users to test and evaluate a selected range of mobile-wireless infrastructure and mobile health care computing devices at the neuroscience ward at Southern Health's Monash Medical Centre, Victoria, Australia. Before the project commenced, the ward had two PC's which were used as terminals by all ward-based staff and numerous multi-disciplinary staff who visited the ward each day. The first stage of the research, outlined in this paper, evaluates a selected range of mobile-wireless infrastructure.