Sarasota Memorial Healthcare System, a hospital in Florida, plans to deploy iPhones to its nurses, to replace audible alarms and alerts, bringing peace and quiet– and improved performance–to the healthcare provider.

“One of the biggest problems in any complex environment, particularly healthcare, is communication,” CIO Denis Baker said. “It’s a nightmare to get a hold of someone, even people on the same floor, as they go about their tasks.”

So Baker’s ears perked up when he was approached by Voalte about piloting a project. Voalte is a startup developing point-of-care communications using mobile technology. Its application uses iPods to send pages and alerts.

On the floor where the iPods were deployed, the hospital reduced overhead pages from 172 in eight hours to 38. The 25 deployed iPods were receiving 4,000 messages per day. “Nurses were getting comment form patients on how quiet it was,” Baker said.

After a successful conclusion to the pilot, hospital senior management early this month approved the deployment of 100 additional devices to a second nursing floor and the critical care environment. The hospital is also looking into giving devices to anesthesiologists for communications between the hospital’s 26 emergency rooms.

Sarasota Memorial Healthcare System, a hospital in Florida, plans to deploy iPhones to its nurses, to replace audible alarms and alerts, bringing peace and quiet– and improved performance–to the healthcare provider.

“One of the biggest problems in any complex environment, particularly healthcare, is communication,” CIO Denis Baker said. “It’s a nightmare to get a hold of someone, even people on the same floor, as they go about their tasks.”

So Baker’s ears perked up when he was approached by Voalte about piloting a project. Voalte is a startup developing point-of-care communications using mobile technology. Its application uses iPods to send pages and alerts.

On the floor where the iPods were deployed, the hospital reduced overhead pages from 172 in eight hours to 38. The 25 deployed iPods were receiving 4,000 messages per day. “Nurses were getting comment form patients on how quiet it was,” Baker said.

After a successful conclusion to the pilot, hospital senior management early this month approved the deployment of 100 additional devices to a second nursing floor and the critical care environment. The hospital is also looking into giving devices to anesthesiologists for communications between the hospital’s 26 emergency rooms.