Radiation caused by wireless devices can interfere with medical equipment and lead to serious clinical consequences, according to an article on the Phys.org website.
At the same time, patients can die due to medical errors that could be prevented if medical personnel had instant access to patient records.
New research from Concordia University is helping define how close healthcare workers with Wi-Fi devices can be to electronic medical equipment.
In a study published recently in IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, researchers from the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science assessed the risk that a medical device will malfunction when radio waves that emanate from portable devices like tablet computers are present in a hospital room, the article said.
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