Hospitals Face Possible Channel Change With Wireless Medical Telemetry Systems
Hospitals that operate a wireless medical telemetry system (WMTS) on TV channel 37 may be moving to a new band location, and those facilities that are not registered could miss out on some money.
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 directed the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to evaluate relocating channel 37, and how to compensate its WMTS licensees. Within the legislation is a section that calls for freeing up spectrum for broadband wireless applications, and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) wants hospitals to get ready for possible changes.
ASHE is asking hospitals that use channel 37 to register with it and receive a license for their WMTS, which is used to transmit patient data. Unregistered facilities may not be able to receive compensation if the FCC relocates channel 37, says ASHE, a Chicago, IL-based division of the American Hospital Association dedicated to facilities engineering.
“We need an accurate count of the number of all WMTS systems so that the FCC has reliable information as officials determine the full impact of moving hundreds of thousands of medical telemetry transmitters to other suitable spectrum says Dale Woodin, ASHE’s executive director.
Rick Hampton, wireless manager for Partners Healthcare in Boston, MA, wrote about this issue in a May post on the AAMIBlog, noting that Channel 37 encompasses half of the radio spectrum available for WMTS.
Hospitals already registered don’t need to take any immediate action, Woodin says.
For more information about how to register, visit www.ashe.org/resources/WMTS.
Posted: July 11, 2012