Real-Time Medical Data over WLANs

As medical records are moving on line, an increasing number of doctors are no longer keeping hand written notes. This finds them moving around in hospitals holding smart phones and tablets to enter and monitor medical data. In many cases it is very important to have any changes in medical data communicated immediately. While a variety of wireless systems are in place or have been proposed, they usually require doctors to carry around additional devices. In this paper the use the Point Coordination Function (PCF) of the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN protocol is proposed to transfer both typical and emergency medical data among doctors, databases and monitoring systems.