Wireless networks (Wi-Fi) seem to be at every stop these days: at hotels, coffee shops, schools, libraries and airports. In fact, you can walk around for blocks in downtown Chicago and stay connected by roaming among multiple free Wi-Fi hotspots and office wireless networks. The technology’s great convenience drives many businesses to deploy their own Wi-Fi networks, and doctors are no exception. We are getting a flurry of interest in business-grade Wi-Fi from our healthcare clients, and a lot of it is driven by the deployment of Electronic Medical Records Systems (EMR). Since many doctors now maintain patient charts and records electronically, doing so on wirelessly connected tablet PCs and laptops offers great advantages in patient experience, portability and doctor satisfaction. If you’re thinking of deploying a Wi-Fi network for your office, here are some things you should consider:

Hardware:

The hardware you’ll need to set up a Wi-Fi network in your office is fundamentally the same as what you probably use at home now, but there are some differences:

• You may need a more powerful wireless router or a system with multiple access points to cover your entire office. Because of all the walls in your office (exam rooms, storage areas, etc), it takes greater signal strength to cover the same area. You also get a lot more interference from your office equipment and neighboring businesses that also use Wi-Fi. If one wireless router is not enough, you may need to install a system that has several access points and can manage connection hand-offs among them. It’s important to have good wireless coverage, since Wi-Fi significantly degrades in speed as you get farther away from the signal source. Calling up larger diagnostic files on a slow (or even intermittent) connection will drive you nuts fast.

• We have found that your garden-variety $60 routers that people buy at Best-Buy have a shelf life of about a year and a half. Some last longer, but they do fry every once in a while. Business-grade routers from manufacturers like Cisco and SonicWALL fare much better in environments where connectivity is not optional.

Every current-version tablet PC or notebook computer I’ve seen comes with a wireless adapter built in, so you don’t need to worry about that part. If you want to wirelessly connect your desktop PC’s, you will need to get an internal card or a USB wireless adapter. However, most of our clients have a hybrid network of wired front desk and back office PCs, and wireless computers for doctors.

Security:

We once got this doctor as a new client, and during our introductory visit (one of those free consultations we provide to our potential flat-rate IT support customers) he bragged about the wireless network that he had set up. A few mouse clicks confirmed our worst fears: there was no encryption on the network whatsoever, the wireless router was a consumer-grade device with no firewall, and the password on the router was “password”. In a medical office environment, this has HIPAA trouble written all over it. Here’s what you need to make sure you have:

• A Wi-Fi connection that is encrypted using a strong standard like WPA or WPA2
• A password-protected router (make it a strong password too, not “DrJones”)
• A strong firewall, preferably with intrusion detection and prevention features

Overall, it’s a good idea to talk to your IT provider about HIPAA compliance. The regulation has pretty specific rules and checklists that must be followed (with some hefty fines for non-compliance), so make sure you’re covered.

Wi-Fi in Waiting Rooms:

No matter how efficient you are as a practice, your patients will probably still have to endure some dead time. Many come with friends and relatives, who will often have to wait for an hour or more for the appointment or procedure to be over. For these reasons, having a free Wi-Fi connection in the waiting room may be a good idea. What’s not a good idea is keeping this connection unsecured or providing your patients with your doctors’ login credentials to access it. Talk to your IT provider about ways to separate your traffic and ensure your main office network cannot be accessed via the waiting room connection. To be 100% safe, consider getting a low-speed (1.5mbps is enough) additional DSL line and a wireless router for your waiting room. This may set you back $40 a month, but you will sleep better at night knowing there is zero overlap between these two connections.