TIA to Develop Health Care Cabling Infrastructure Standards
September 3, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) is developing cabling standards that will define telecommunications infrastructure requirements for health care facilities such as hospitals and clinics.
The standard will outline cabling, cabling topologies and cabling distances requirements as well as pathways, spaces and other ancillary requirements to support a range of health care facilities and systems.
The document is intended to support biomedical systems such as radio frequency identification (RFID), building automation system, nurse call, security, access control and pharmaceutical inventory, particularly those that use or can use Internet protocol (IP)-based infrastructure.
In particular, with regard to horizontal cabling for health care applications, the working group that proposed the new standard recommends that the meaning of the term "work area" must be expanded and a minimum number of required permanent links to provide necessary cabling for each work area must be established, according to TIA. The work areas to be addressed are divided into the following classifications:
- Patient services.
- Surgery/procedure/operating rooms.
- Emergency.
- Ambulatory care.
- Women's health.
- Diagnostic and treatment.
- Caregiver.
- Service/support.
- Facilities.
- Operations.
- Critical care.
The standard will be developed by TIA Engineering Committee TR-42 User Premises, Telecommunications Cabling Infrastructure's Subcommittee TR-42.1 Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling.
Source: Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).