Hospitals unplug er, unwire

The more consumer wireless handsets began to resemble the flip-top communicator that William Shatner used in the original “Star Trek” series, the clearer it's becoming that the next generation of wireless communications should mimic those one-button lapel jobs worn by Shatner's successor, Patrick Stewart.

Enter Vocera Communications, which makes black badges roughly the size of a small harmonica that are becoming the next generation of pager (cell phone, walkie-talkie, etc.) for early adopter vertical industries like hospitals and so-called big-box retail stores like Target and Best Buy.

Here's why: Say a nurse needs to consult a doctor in a hospital. He or she usually has to go to the nurse clerk, call the doctor on a standard phone, and leave a message if the doctor isn't there. When the doc is free, he or she then calls the nurse clerk and has the nurse paged, by which time the nurse is often busy. After a few minutes, the doc gives up and moves on, and after all this wasted time the nurse's question remains unanswered.

With Vocera, the nurse simply taps his or her badge, says “Call Doctor Howard” (or any list of personnel) and instantly reaches the badge on the doc's lapel. If the doc is detained, the nurse can leave a message, to which the doc can respond directly rather than through the clerk's desk.

Mark Zielazinski, CIO of El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., an early customer of Vocera, called the badges a “wild success” among nurses there. After an unpopular previous trial of another vendor's handheld devices, El Camino's nurses liked the simplicity and unintrusiveness of Vocera's badges — no numbers to dial and nothing to carry around. The hospital's multicultural staff, who speak with a range of accents, had some difficulty at first, Zielazinski said, but with Vocera's headquarters less than two miles away, they never lacked support.

Zielazinski said he wants badges to replace the hospital's “obnoxious” overhead paging system, and he especially liked the system's programmability, which allows managers to contact their direct reports even when they're in do-not-disturb mode.

Vocera has nearly 60 customers, more than 40 of which are hospitals. But its wares are also well-suited to hotels, cruise ships, factories — any place with a contained but mobile workforce in need of rapid internal communication, said CEO Julie Shimer. Even the U.S. Senate is now trialing Vocera's gear.

“In a typical big-box retail store such as Target or Best Buy, you might have 40 or 50 retail clerks and back office support staff carrying radios on one or two channels. It's hard to reach the person you want to reach because everything is broadcast to the whole group,” Shimer said. “I can broadcast to a group of almost any size.”

More than 30 distributors — most of which are healthcare supply firms, not wireless LAN players — sell Vocera's gear for a few reasons. Wireless LAN business models tend to rely on usage-based revenue, unlike Vocera, and they don't typically offer the kind of training and work-flow consultation Vocera's partners provide to make sure clients make the most of their badges.

Though Vocera has met with wireless carriers in an effort to promote partnerships, carriers haven't been receptive, Shimer said, which puzzled her, given their need to permeate in-building wireless markets.

“Their primary reaction to me so far has been, ‘Well, we don't see using Wi-Fi for voice,’ which I think is a little bit of putting their heads in the sand,” Shimer said.

“I imagine we're just going to have to be a bigger market force before they recognize it,” she said. “That's fine.”