It has come to my attention this week that a major IDN seems to be having difficulty having a great experience with Vocera badges on Cisco infrastructure. www.vocera.com

While certainly I believe Cisco knows their stuff; the fact is that healthcare is a very, very challenging multi-path environment.  You add to the user model of the Vocera badge/or device often worn around the chest, then you have a perfect environment for the 2.4GHz signal to be attenuated by the water in the person’s body. Not unlink a telemetry transmitter.  You add then the small micro-strip antenna, it may work well in an open environment, but challenges remain for the demanding environment of healthcare. Perhap’s Ruckus offers some real technical advantages to make this application work better. www.ruckuswireless.com

BeamFlex consists of a smart, compact antenna array with multiple elements, which can be combined in real time to form unique antenna patterns. The advanced BeamFlex system software continually learns the environment with all its hostilities and interference sources, including disruptive RF conditions, numerous communicating devices, network performance issues, and application flows. Then, it selects the optimum antenna pattern for each communicating device in real time, while actively avoiding interference and minimizing noise to nearby networks and devices.

Beamflex provides

• Over 3X increase in performance and range
• 8X expanded coverage
• Stabilized wireless network performance, for picture-perfect video streaming and crystal-clear voice communications
• Maximized power efficiency
• Interference mitigation

Unlike omni-directional antennas that radiate signals in all directions, BeamFlex directs transmit energy towards the best path to the receiving device. And unlike fixed-positioned directional antennas, BeamFlex dynamically configures its "beam" on a per-station, per-packet basis, to achieve omni-directional coverage.