The UK's Health Service Told To Ditch 'Outdated' Pagers (bbc.com)

The UK's NHS has been told to stop using pagers for communications by 2021, in order to save money. The health service still uses about 130,000 pagers, which is about 10% of the total left in use globally. From a report: They cost the NHS about $8.6 million a year, because only one service provider supports them. Health Secretary Matt Hancock called them "outdated" and said he wanted to rid the NHS of "archaic technology like pagers and fax machines". However, many in the medical industry say that pagers are quick and reliable - especially in emergencies -- and proposed replacements have their own shortcomings.

Comments

Re:Here is why pagers are so important

[Z00L00K]

Add to it that a pager also is fine when you have radio-sensitive medical equipment like EEG and EKG measurement equipment.

Re:The reason pagers are still alive

[Etcetera]

Traditional pagers are not un-common in US hospitals, but it depends on a number of factors. Reliability, vendor contracts, urban/rural, and plenty of other things. Doctors usually don't need smartphones moment to moment absent some other check-in app.

I used to work for an RTLS provider in hospitals that worked with a distinct radio protocol for telemetry tracking, and was running into problems at times converting to low-powered Bluetooth because there was a lot of other RF stuff running. There was a mobile interface to the data, but wired stations were always where the critical communication was happening.

The hospitals I know of that have moved away from traditional paging have simply replaced them with on-site paging -- same kind of system you'd have to know your table was ready at a restaurant, but souped up. People really only migrated if/when they felt the last remaining local pager service was on its last legs, since there was a capital cost and not much reason to switch otherwise.