Telecommunications for Development of Healthcare a service view

1
Telecommunications for Development of
Healthcare- a service view

• for AIIA Healthcare briefing 27 May 2008
• Peter Hitchiner
• Principal
• Insight Telecommunications Consulting
• peter_at_insightteleconsult.com.au

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Healthcare perspective

• Service view driver, not the telecommunications
  technology
• Telecommunications should be transparent to the
  service delivery
• Healthcare services delivered electronically
  depend on (for example)
• Delivery in the manner required (mobility at the
  delivery point, usability, presentation, MMI,
  ergonomics, context awareness)
• Availability when needed (reliable service)
• Delivery when needed (acceptable latency)
• Flexibility to meet diversity of healthcare
  delivery
• Sufficient, necessary, current and accurate
  information needed (to avoid information
  overload context awareness)
• Telecommunications can be an enabler (eg mobile
  solutions) and a disrupter (opens up new ways of
  delivering and administering healthcare)
• Unless expectations are met, innovation through
  telecommunications will be resisted manage
  expectations

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Barriers to more effective use of
telecommunications in health

• Budgetary
• Legacy systems
• Resistance to changing process to make optimum
  use of technology available (replication of old
  processes on new technology platforms is unlikely
  to lead to effective use)
• If it isnt broken dont fix it risk of change
• Privacy and security issues
• Electromagnetic compatibility for use of radio
  systems in certain clinical areas
• Training on new systems/applications (a major
  cost/time barrier) systems should be designed to
  provide on-line training, be intuitive/built in
  tutorial and user error tolerant, common user
  interfaces where possible. Should be transparent
  to ICT
• In general, technical barriers exist only to
  extent solutions not cost effective

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Practical issues for telecommunications networks

• Economic issues in making public networks highly
  available/reliable
• Networks do fail, radio cannot provide 100
  availability/coverage in most practical
  situations
• Applications need to be tolerant of telecom
  network practical implementation
• Data rates not the only determinant of latency,
  also application design, broadband not a
  limiter to most applications but can improve
  capability/performance
• Private wide area networks unlikely to solve
  shortcomings, better to make smarter use of
  public networks

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Telecommunications Standards

• Necessary but can be contentious
• Good results where broad collaboration for a
  common goal (even where complex eg GSM)
• Often a standard emerges through adoption by
  users but competing standards can be costly (and
  so can over standardisation hence effective
  collaboration desirable!)
• Where a plethora of standards Technology can
  facilitate interoperability by providing
  connectors (telecommunications networks can
  provide the glue among different applications)

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Telecommunications User Equipment Capability

• Applications will typically need to run on
  platforms designed for many markets to be cost
  effective however increasing flexibility of
  platforms (eg mobile terminals) through
• Embedded Systems
• Software Defined Radio (SDR)
• WLAN/WiMax/Bluetooth/3G/LTE
• RFID (asset management, security)
• Locator (location/context aware services, asset
  tracking)
• Where will the power come from?

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Peter Hitchiner Principal Insight
Telecommunications Consulting peter_at_insightteleco
nsult.com.au Mobile [phone]