Survey: Budget, Power Requirements, Availability Top Concerns in Hospital IT

Columbus, Ohio-based Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity, today announced results of its 2010 survey on IT and facility issues inside the hospital. The survey results, which include responses from North America-based professionals in IT management/IT operations, data center management and facilities management, reported budget, power requirements and availability as top concerns. The findings reinforce that, given the mission-critical nature of healthcare IT, hospitals are increasingly dependent on technology to operate and serve patients.

The survey results also indicated a correlation between the importance of power and cooling infrastructure and the reliance on IT systems, with more than half of respondents upgrading their healthcare facility’s power and cooling infrastructure when implementing new technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)/network communications and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).

While the importance of uninterruptible power is well understood in data centers and network closets, the survey results suggest that the same cannot be said for the hospital itself. In instances where IT usage comes to the point of care, more than one-half of patient rooms are not supported by any uninterruptible power source. Additionally, just 28 percent of operating rooms have emergency power receptacles serviced through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This lack of protection makes critical patient data vulnerable to downtime as there is no ride-through until the hospital’s emergency generators can assume the critical load.