The UK's Health Service Told To Ditch 'Outdated' Pagers (bbc.com)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 Health Secretary Matt Hancock called them "outdated" and said he wanted to rid the NHS of "archaic technology like pagers and fax machines".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

Here is why pagers are so important

[Anonymous Coward]

They should keep the pagers, absolutely. The reason is this:

Pagers use slow transmission protocols that do not need a huge S/N to be properly decoded. That means pagers are going to work almost everywhere you would otherwise get an annoying "No Service" notification on your phone, such as elevators, parking garages, basements, and so on.

It would be a blunder of gargantuan proportions to stop using pagers for critical messaging. Just because the mobile carriers want to take over the pager spectrum for 5G doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Re:Here is why pagers are so important

[Joce640k]

130,000 of them for $8.6 million a year. What are they going to replace them with that costs only $5.5 per month and has the same reliability?

Sounds like a lot

[rmdingler]

But that's only $66 US per year. If all you need yo do is contact someone to call or come in, that's way cheaper than providing phones to employees.

The reason pagers are still alive

[scorp1us]

Pagers don't emit cellphone-level radiation & electrical interference around medical devices.

Pages have a weak acknowledge capability. Meanwhile you can't leave your cellphone by a radio. The interference it causes to the radio is the same interference it may cause in a medical device. And it may not cause a malfunction that gets noticed. What if the morphine drop was increased by a random flipped bit.

Medical devices are not evaluated in cellphone conditions. And given that doctors work in the immediate vicinity of medial equipment it is a risk the hospital is not willing to take.

Re:The reason pagers are still alive

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical devices are not evaluated in cellphone conditions. And given that doctors work in the immediate vicinity of medial equipment it is a risk the hospital is not willing to take.

That was the same garbage they used to explain why cellphones couldn't be used on airplanes. Simply a convenient lie. Do we really think an aircraft could be brought down or redirected off-course just by some jackass in the cabin whipping out his cellphone or grandma forgetting to put it in airplane mode? Of course not. And if there actually was a chance, the liability rests with the carriers. They'd never tolerate that kind of risk -- they would replace or shield the affected equipment. Same for hospitals.

Re:Deploy their own Paging system

[Pascoea]

The major downside is the support of the infrastructure to keep the system running

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The issue is that the equipment and expertise available to maintain a 1980s era network is dwindling. I used to work at a company who had the contract to maintain the local hospital's private pager network. I have no idea of the contract value, but they were the only game in town that had the knowledge to do it. There was literally no competition in the pager space around there. If they went tits up, the hospitals would have been screwed. I can see the desire to get away from a system like that.