I came across this article that identified the top 5 wirless challenges in healthcare. They go into more detail of the challenges, but here’s their list:

1. Physical connectivity (especially in old hospitals)
2. Technology connectivity issues
3. Meeting user demand
4. Security considerations (high risk of stolen laptops)
5. Network management issues

So these challenges are really mostly focused on hospital situations or at least larger group practices. The exception is the security considerations. However, I think most people are far past the idea of wireless being any less secure than a wired connection. In fact, one could argue that wireless is actually more secure than the wired connection if it’s set up properly.

The biggest issue on this list that I see with wireless is the first one. Some of these old buildings just kill a wireless signal. Add in asbestos and the difficulty to run wire for a wireless access point and you have a real challenge getting a good wireless signal in these old buildings.

One thing I think this list and article are missing is that I think we’re going to see an ever growing trend of people using wireless broadband cards instead of the traditional wireless. Sure, in a small fixed setting, they’ll still use the traditional wireless. However, the mobile doctors doing visits to the hospitals or other locations are going to be using the wireless broadband cards more and more.