The UK's Health Service Told To Ditch 'Outdated' Pagers (bbc.com)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 Health Secretary Matt Hancock called them "outdated" and said he wanted to rid the NHS of "archaic technology like pagers and fax machines".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

Re:Here is why pagers are so important

[lgw]

hey 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.

Amazon made the transition from physical pagers to an app just a few years ago. Turns out that pager coverage and reliability isn't as good as you'd expect once you get down to only one vendor. Plus, in a disaster where thousands of pages get sent in a short time, you saturate the vendor's infrastructure and pages get delayed by tens of minutes.

The app also sucked at first, and most people on call used both, but within about 2 years it was more reliable on average than physical pagers, and they were lagely abandoned.

For those who don't know, Amazon cares very much about paging people. Paging doctors is merely a matter of life and death; while paging engineers when amazon.com is broke affects profit. Needless to say, far more money gets spent addressing the latter.

It is really cool though to see the machine work from the inside. When anything goes wrong anywhere that affects your ability to buy stuff on amazon.com, it takes less than five minutes before engineers representing dozens of teams are fully engaged with the problem, with most people checking in within 2-3 minutes. Problems are usually localized to one team, usually with an initial theory of cause, within about 10 minutes of the problem appearing. It's amazing to watch from the sidelines when you're not the one on the hook.

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.

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.

Deploy their own Paging system

[mprindle]

I have several customers in our area including hospitals that have their own private paging systems. The spectrum is licensed and dedicated to their use. The are only designed to work with-in their facilities, which in the case of hospital staff, is mainly where they need the quick response. Outside the facilities then standard phone calls, text messaging can be used to call someone in.

The major downside is the support of the infrastructure to keep the system running, but with regular maintenance it's not that big of an ask.

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.

Re:lots of advantages

[tlhIngan]

battery life that smartphones (hell even feature phones) can only dream of.

Most pagers I know of still use AA batteries. Why? Rechargables just don't last as long!

They literally will last for months on a single AA battery. A busy pager may last a month (one that's constantly beeping and vibrating). Off a single AA battery.

But one that isn't so busy can probably go up to a year on a single AA battery.

Re:The only problem with pagers

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but what data needs to be encrypted? In this use case, most pagers at best send short messages like phone numbers or text like “Call ER”. I suppose patient information could be sent but rarely do hospitals do that preferring for voice communication because a conversation is far more effective.

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.