This is to congratulate Philips Medical Systems www.philips.com for their recent press release with Aruba Networks.  http://www.arubanetworks.com/company/news/release.php?id=204   After over six years, finally the market leader in patient monitoring has somewhat now followed the trend and marketplace proven abilities of Welch Allyn and Draeger Medical Systems. It is the innovators that can change the direction of the industry it seems.  Please note the similiar press releases from Welch Allyn and Draeger Medical. http://www.welchallyn.com/pressroom/releases/pressNews.jsp?id=18-ca-114-1228142540757  http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-177983584.html over a year and more ago. This seems to show that Philips Medical Systems as a medical device manufacturer of "portable" patient monitoring can "finally" converge their "portable IntelliVue" patient monitoring application with other enterprise data, voice, and video traffic. Previous it seemed there was resistance to to accomplish this by Philips, meaning the requirement of separate dedicated AP(s) for 802.11a.  No doubt a lot of resistence was encountered for multiple networks and dedicated AP(s), it just did not make economic sense and the technical argument lost steam. The fact that they partnered with Aruba Networks says a lot as Aruba provides the Quality of Service (QoS), on a packet to packet level basis that will provide the needed quality of service for such life critical applications and alarm persistence as patient monitoring. This is quite unique in the WLAN industry, and Aruba Networks has a patent on this.  Now that Philips is  going to market with this solution; what is the solution for WMTS from Philips Medical Systems?  Unlike both Welch Allyn and Draeger that have introduced “patient worn” (traditional telemetry), monitors in 802.11a/b/g, it seems that General Electric, and Philips will need to install a separate antenna infrastructure for WMTS.  So again, this means two separate antenna infrastructures.  Will Philips Medical Systems also be able to provide a VLAN based strategy for the "wired" hardwired network sharing existing L2/L3 switches, or will this require dedicated switches and a separate "hardwired" networking topology for IntelliVue? The trend in the growth of patient monitoring is in telemetry monitoring (patient worn monitoring), and the trend is for this to be house wide to provide flexible patient monitoring, not just traditional unit based telemetry. The logical next step for Philips will be (it seems it should) be a migration strategy from legacy WMTS to enterprise grade 802.11a/b/g/n patient worn (telemetry), monitoring and converge this onto a WLAN Aruba Network as well as provide as stated (aforementioned) portable (transport), patient monitoring. This could provide the healthcare industry huge cost savings, while additionally lowering risk for QoS and real time monitoring.  Cost savings include a one time site survey, coordinated installations, and real time SNMP monitoring  for security, IDS, and QoS using the enterprise AirWave tool from Aruba Networks. Note WMTS cannot  use enterprise grade tools since it is proprietary. So the final question remains, now that Philips it seems  has followed where the industry is going; how long will it be before they introduce to the market a replacement for IntelliVue WMTS?  Welch Allyn and Draeger Medical already have solutions at hand. That is an enterprise converged wired and wireless network (using existing L2/L3 switches, controllers, and AP infrstructure) that can handle both 802.11a/b/g portable monitoring, hard wired networks, AND "patient worn" traditional telemetry in 802.11a/b/g. This is nothing new for these companies as they have been doing it for years. The result has been a lot of cost savings for hospitals both from a CAPEX and OPEX.