Wi-Fi Enhances Productivity at St. Luke's Episcopal Health System

NetMotion Wireless has expanded its relationship with St. Luke's Episcopal Health System in Houston, Texas, to support up to 900 laptops and mobile devices. NetMotion's Mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN), Mobility XE(TM), helps St. Luke's doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals boost mobile productivity by allowing them to stay connected to critical applications, roam seamlessly between multiple Wi-Fi hot spots, and maintain applications even when users move in and out of wireless coverage areas.

"We needed to make sure that no matter where in the hospital facility these devices might be, they can reliably access critical patient records and applications," said Gene Gretzer, senior analyst and wireless initiative project leader for St. Luke's. "With Mobility XE, we get greater reliability and security which makes our clinicians more productive."

In a typical healthcare deployment with handheld devices, tablets or laptops, clinicians and staff are constantly moving between floors or buildings, or entering elevators or corridors. This often causes network connections to be lost, which in turn forces users to restart applications, re-enter lost data, and significantly impacts productivity. Mobility XE allows secure and seamless roaming between multiple networks and when connections are lost, automatically maintains application sessions so that healthcare professionals can focus on their work, and not on managing a device or network.

"St. Luke's has long been a forerunner in implementing wireless technology to improve both the quality of its care and the productivity of its clinicians and staff," said Tom Johnston, SVP products and marketing, NetMotion Wireless. "Our Mobile VPN has supported St. Luke's as their needs have grown to include additional user groups and a broader range of applications and devices, so that no matter where the workers are, their connections remain stable and secure."

In addition to providing wireless access that meets HIPAA security standards, St. Luke's uses NetMotion to access a variety of healthcare applications, including:

-- Patient charting and records;
-- Blood management and monitoring;
-- Neurological and x-ray test results; and
-- Portable scanning for patient and test result identification.

NetMotion also announced that it will focus on new initiatives to serve the healthcare sector, including hospitals, mobile home healthcare workforces, and medical device manufacturers. Today, the company supports the wireless deployments of some of the most well-recognized healthcare agencies in the country including the Mayo Clinic, New York Presbyterian, the Marshfield Clinic, Lee Memorial Health System, St. Joseph's Hospital in Wisconsin, the Camino Real Mental Health Mental Retardation Center in Texas and many more. NetMotion also supports the mobile field service forces of a number of medical device manufacturers such as St. Jude Medical and Resurgens Orthopaedics.

More than 1,000 businesses and government agencies rely on NetMotion's Mobility XE to mitigate some of the most common challenges in mobile deployments today, including end-to-end security, application stability as users move in and out of wireless coverage areas and seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and wide-area cellular networks.