Wireless in San Diego

About a year ago, the managed health-care system began installing Cisco Systems Wi-Fi networks in all of its seven San Diego-area hospitals. The first efforts--the introduction of rolling, wireless computer carts in intensive care and the emergency room--were a way to save space by eliminating large, fixed computer stations and clearing away cumbersome coils of cables. They were also an effort to improve efficiency and reduce mistakes--wireless-networked devices allowed hospital staff to track and update patient care and billing information while on the move, rather than storing up handwritten notes until the end of the day, then performing time-consuming and mistake-prone manual data entry. "This way, nurses can complete charting in the ICU, or track care decisions made in the ER, on the spot," explains Sharp's chief information officer and senior vice president William A. Spooner.

At Sharp Memorial Hospital, a 330-bed hospital in the north end of San Diego, practicing pharmacist and resident "computer guy" S. John Johnson is leading Sharp's latest wireless pilot program, which tests tablet PCs with the hospital's pharmacy staff. Today's hospital pharmacists often make rounds in the wards to check prescriptions written by doctors, watching for allergies or drug interactions. In the past, Johnson would make his rounds, then either hunt for a free computer terminal at the nurse's station or return to his desk in the first-floor pharmacy to input information into the computer and approve the medicines. Only then could a nurse collect the drugs and administer them to the patient.

Now, Johnson does everything in real time on his wireless Toshiba Tablet PC. "We can approve in-house prescriptions from wherever we are," he says. As the pharmacist moves from ward to ward, his prescription approvals register on the hospital's computer network. Most of the hospital's drugs are stored in large automated dispensing machines in each of the 14 nursing stations at the hospital. The networked machines, which are manufactured by San Diego-based Pyxis Corp., resemble overgrown ATMs. Once prescription approvals are uploaded to the network by the pharmacist, attending nurses can log on to the nearest Pyxis machine with a user name and a fingerprint scan and receive the drugs.

Next on Johnson's wish list is making the approval process for outpatient prescriptions similarly efficient. Most of those still arrive as faxes, which quickly pile up. A new fax server will take the faxes electronically, then redirect them to pharmacists' tablet PCs for wireless approval. Patients may now regularly wait as long as two hours for a prescription; Johnson predicts that the new system should cut that to 45 minutes. But the real impact will be felt in rural clinics that can't afford full-time pharmacists. Using a Pyxis machine at the clinic and the server at Sharp, a hospital-based pharmacist could help review off-site prescriptions and the medicine would automatically dispense at the clinic.

With the success of the pharmacy pilot program, and with mobile computer terminals already a fixture throughout the hospital system, Spooner is already looking for other ways to deploy wireless technology at Sharp, including outfitting some doctors with wireless iPaqs to track patient care and ensure proper billing. "Health care is a no-brainer industry that needs it," he says.

Better Office Buildings

Back downtown, commercial real-estate developer Matthew Spathas is surveying the city from one of the highest vantage points in San Diego: the rooftop of One America Plaza, a newly opened commercial office building managed by Sentre Partners, of which Spathas is one. The roof offers a view of two other Sentre Partners properties: the NBC building and the SBC building, both with bold logos that proclaim their identities across the skyline. These three buildings are the start of what Spathas hopes will be a revolution in the way businesses look at bandwidth and wireless access.

The NBC and SBC buildings are fully wired office spaces where new tenants have plug-and-play 100 MBPS Internet access the instant they move in. The lobbies and plaza areas are popular free Wi-Fi hot spots. But it is One America Plaza that is Sentre's crown jewel: a 600,000-square-foot office building with the trademark ready-to-use broadband access, but also featuring Wi-Fi access on all 34 floors, (not to mention the four below-ground parking levels). The wireless service, which offers connection speeds up to 54 MBPS over a Cisco Systems Wi-Fi network, is free to all tenants, while jacking into the 100 MBPS wired network costs just $250 per month. That compares to the typical cost of about $900 per month that an individual commercial tenant normally pays in order to receive T-1 service (60 times slower) from a local ISP--and that's not including installation, or the subsequent costs of deploying a private Wi-Fi network.