NEW ORLEANS, LA — (Marketwire) — 03/04/13 — Meru Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: MERU), a leader in virtualized wireless LAN solutions, today released the results from a February, 2013 survey of healthcare IT leaders on their Wi-Fi uses and needs. The survey, conducted annually, revealed three significant patterns.
While 85 percent of hospitals use computers on wheels (CoW/WoW) and 73 percent allow patients and visitors to access Wi-Fi, only 43 percent of hospitals are using Life-Critical technologies such as smart pumps or telemetry on Wi-Fi. This low adoption of Life-Critical technology is especially interesting given that 77 percent have some major concern with their WLAN infrastructure.
Of those with concerns, 55 percent say that they regard performance, capacity or guaranteeing performance for critical applications, while for 29 percent the major concern is security. More than a third of the 100 respondents are constraining their use of Wi-Fi due to limitations in reliability and performance. 57 percent of those running life-critical applications deploy a separate network to run those applications.
Despite only 40 percent of hospitals claiming Wi-Fi deployment across 100 percent of their campuses, they continue to deploy additional mobile healthcare devices to clinicians. Eighty-five percent currently have CoW/WoW and 56 percent of the respondents indicated that more than a quarter of the work currently being done on CoW/WoW would shift to smartphones and tablets within three years.
Seventy-nine percent of respondents indicated that they allow clinicians to bring their own mobile devices (BYOD) into hospitals and use them while on the job. Eighty five percent responded that Wi-Fi is important for “Meaningul Use.” With the focus on “Meaningful Use,” it is not surprising that 49 percent of respondents support EMR/CPOE on tablets or smartphones.
Only seven percent of hospitals have integrated alarms with mobility devices used by clinicians and 37 percent of respondents are using Wi-Fi for nurse call systems. Integration of such technologies can assist hospitals in responding quickly to patient-s needs.
“The results of this survey align closely with what we heard from hospital CIOs while developing Meru-s UCN,” said Kamal Anand, senior vice president and general manager of healthcare business unit at Meru. “Meru is intently focused on collaborating closely with life-critical medical device vendors and mission-critical solution vendors to foster much-needed integration required for modern healthcare delivery.”
For a copy of a presentation outlining the results of all of the survey results, visit the Meru web site here:
Visit Meru at booth #1654 at HIMSS 2013 in New Orleans, March 4-6, 2013.
To read more about Meru in healthcare, visit the Meru web site for the following materials:
The Meru 2013 Healthcare IT WLAN Survey:
The Uninterrupted Care Network (Solutions Brief):
Meru Healthcare Overview:
Meru Networks (NASDAQ: MERU) designs, develops, and distributes virtualized wireless LAN solutions that provide enterprises with the performance, reliability, predictability and operational simplicity of a wired network with the advantages of mobility. Meru Networks eliminates the deficiencies of multichannel, client-controlled architectures with its innovative, single-channel, virtualized network architecture that easily handles device density and diversity. Meru wireless LAN solutions are deployed in major vertical industries including Fortune 500 businesses, education, hospitality, healthcare and retail supply chain. Founded in 2002, Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Visit or call (408) 215-5300 for more information.
Wilson Craig
Parallax Public Relations for Meru Networks
+1 408 516 6182
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