Cornwall NHS staff get VoIP phone badges

Tags: BT iS Sales US VOIP Wireless

23 Feb 2006

Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has issued its staff with voice-activated handsfree 'badges', worn around the neck on a lanyard, which can put any user in touch with another member of staff just by saying their name or department into a microphone.

The Vocera system (below), which was installed and is managed by BT, runs over a 802.11b wireless LAN with uses VoIP technology. BT have placed 500 wireless access points throughout the site through which the devices can communicate.

Vocera device

"Instant, secure and reliable communications are vital in a hospital setting," said Simon Goodwin, direct of IT for the Cornwall NHS community. "The new system is simple to use and will allow us to respond more quickly to our patients' needs."

Users push a button on the front of the badge to talk and give voice commands. There is also a second, 'do not disturb', button that forwards any calls to voicemail or other users' badges. According to the manufacturers, the talk time is around 2 hours and the standby 44 hours, and charging takes 2 hours.

One benefit of the badges, say BT, is that staff don't have to remember the names of the people they are trying to contact; if they ask for a pre-defined department they are put through to the first person available.

As well as clinicians, porters also carry the devices. A text-to-voice system is used to direct them to their next job. The badges have also been linked to the hospital's workflow management system.

Steve Wells, sales director of BT Health, said: "The system overcomes many of the deficiencies of alternative technologies in this highly specialised field and we are delighted to be working with the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, which is trail-blazing this technology in the UK healthcare market."

A spokesperson for Royal Cornwall NHS Trust could not be contacted as of press time.

Readers Comments

New ways of working!

p.short@nhs.net

24 Feb 06 09:16

Having seen this system in operation 18 months ago in Sarasota, USA it is good to see the same technology being used and evaluated in the UK. In Sarasota it was one piece of IT development that gained rapid popularity amongst clinicians for added value. Uses extended to answering external calls, team paging and dictation of clinical notes on a ward round. Dictated notes were then processed through voice recognition software, reviewed by a secretary and made available for “sign-off” within 30 minutes at the end of the round. Progressive developments like this are needed for a true integrated EPR.

WLAN deployment is required which has other massive benefits

24 Feb 06 10:10

There are a number of Trusts piloting / looking to pilot this technology, the major hurdle being the cost of deployment for a campus-wide WLAN technology.

Given that adaptive WLAN technology supports applications such as appliance / device location, there areother massive potential benefit to Healthcare environments through the use of RFID tagging. Trusts who do deploy WLAN need to consider security and encrytion solutions to support CfH guidelines on Patient Identifiable Data.

Useful - but an infection risk?

Rod@RodSpace.co.uk

24 Feb 06 15:10

This looks as if it could be really useful tool for clinical staff & I could have done with it when I worked in A&E.

I just wonder whether the "badges" can be autoclaved when they get blood/vomit etc on them & what the infection control teams will think?. When staff have these + their ID card with access for NCRS/C&B etc (& maybe still a pen) where are they going to carry them all?