In recent years, Bluetooth® innovations have seen wider deployment across commercial spaces, including retail, hospitality, tourism, and medical. Now — thanks to the technology’s global proliferation, method of signal transmission, low power consumption, and capability to create large-scale device networks — Bluetooth technology is in a prime position to further enhance the healthcare experience for patients and staff.

Connectivity at Every Level

From fitness trackers and smartwatches to glucose monitors and pulse oximeters, Bluetooth enabled wearables have taken over the connected device market. New waves of wearable innovations are creating greater demands for monitoring devices that can support medical diagnosis and care. As such, Bluetooth® technology is increasingly replacing wired equivalents in recovery suites, operating rooms, and ICUs.

New expansions of the technology significantly enhance security, increase signal range, and strengthen asset tracking and wayfinding capabilities, widening the use cases for Bluetooth devices in healthcare facilities. Using Bluetooth technology, patients and visitors can easily navigate through a large hospital or medical campus while healthcare staff can quickly locate hospital assets like essential medical equipment and patients in need of urgent care.

Frequency Hopping

Concerns about adding radio-frequency technology to an environment already saturated with wireless signals can cause healthcare facilities to take pause. Having too many devices transmitting on highly used channels can create radio interference and distortion. But Bluetooth® technology uses adaptive frequency hopping (AFH) to minimize its impact in environments laden with wireless signals.

Through AFH, a Bluetooth device can see which channels are in use and avoid those channels in the hop sequence. This reduces radio impedance and allows Bluetooth packets to transmit through the toughest interference sources, making it an ideal add-on to any wireless infrastructure.

Low Energy Consumption

Since the adoption of Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) in 2010, Bluetooth technology has supported optimized energy consumption on battery-powered devices that can transfer small amounts of data to local user interfaces like tablets and smartphones. 

Healthcare spaces now employ a wide range of medical devices — such as blood glucose monitors, asthma inhalers, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD) — that use this technology to improve patient condition monitoring and care. Thanks to the power efficiency of Bluetooth LE, these devices can operate for years on small, coin-cell batteries. The lower-power properties of Bluetooth LE also support compliance requirements for environmental sensors and patient room monitoring.

Large-Scale Device Networking

As the demand for comprehensive, secure wireless device networks continues to grow across commercial and industrial spaces, healthcare environments stand to benefit from the increased security, reliability, and scalability these facility-wide networks provide.

Bluetooth® mesh enables the creation of large-scale device networks and is ideally suited for control, monitoring, and automation systems that require tens, hundreds, or thousands of devices to reliably and securely communicate with one another. A Bluetooth mesh network can help healthcare facilities combat cost pressures, provide better patient care, and improve operational efficiencies by using Bluetooth technology to monitor patients and advance emergency services.

Download this white paper on Connectivity Choices for your Medical Device and IoMT Application and see how the latest wireless innovations are being used to support a wide range of healthcare applications.

FEATURED INFOGRAPHIC

Bluetooth Location Services

See 8 use cases for enhancing building efficiencies and creating a better visitor experience, discover new data that supports the latest trends and forecasts, and find out what’s driving the rapid adoption of location services solutions.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD

How a Bluetooth Sticker Makes it Easy to Track Anything

Bluetooth stickers, also known as Bluetooth tags or Bluetooth beacons, have multiple features that…

EJOT | INDUTRAX Case Study

EJOT, headquartered in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, is a group of medium-sized companies with production…

Bluetooth Technology Is Standardizing Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL)

Electronic shelf labels (ESL) – small, battery-powered electronic paper displays that present product and…

Bluetooth ESL – The Global Standard for the Electronic Shelf Label Market

Electronic shelf label (ESL) systems have historically relied on proprietary protocols for wireless communication,…

How to Effectively Use Bluetooth Location Beacons for Asset Tracking

Bluetooth location beacons can be used in a wide range of scenarios including asset…

The Importance of Standards in the Smart Retail Market

Retailers are increasingly looking towards Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to help them deliver…

Cassia Networks Outlines New Bluetooth Trends for 2023

Cassia Networks delivers easy-to-manage, long-range, multiple-device connectivity, edge processing and location services solutions that…

The Benefits Of Bluetooth LE Connectivity In Power Tools

Integrating Bluetooth into power tools has emerged as one of the fastest growing –…

Texas Instruments Highlights What to Expect From Bluetooth Technology in 2023

With more than 20 years of connectivity experience, Texas Instruments provides high-quality, low-power, and…

The Bluetooth® Technology Roadmap for the Future

Ken Kolderup, CMO of the Bluetooth SIG, shares recent and upcoming enhancements to Bluetooth®

Bluetooth Development Training: Works With 2022

The role Bluetooth has played, and will continue to play, in the evolution of IoT…

Two New Technologies Shaking up the IoT

By example, Bluetooth has broadened its tracks through its direction-finding technologies, Angle-of-Arrival (AoA), and…

Bringing Wireless Controls To The Epicentre Of Connectivity

This year, the time came for the lighting infrastructure at the Bluetooth SIG headquarters…

Smart Lighting And Controls Halve Energy Consumption At Campus Pitzemburg

Campus Pitzemburg has cut its energy usage by 50% thanks to smart controlled energy…

Rethinking Workspaces

How spatial intelligence & occupancy tracking solutions help to overcome corporate real estate business…

2022 Bluetooth Market Update

Featuring new market insights and industry forecasts from ABI Research and other analyst firms...

Bluetooth Location Services

See 8 use cases for enhancing building efficiencies and creating a better visitor experience, discover new data that supports the latest trends and forecasts, and find out what’s driving the rapid adoption of location services solutions.

Smart Solutions Using Network Lighting Infrastructures

An intelligent network lighting control infrastructure helps business owners and staff know more about…

Tile is working with Lenovo to help you find your lost laptop

Announced at CES 2022, Tile and Lenovo are teaming up to make ThinkPad X1s…

The new Chipolo Card Spot puts Apple’s Find My network in your wallet

Chipolo has a new Bluetooth tracker it’s announcing at CES 2022, a new version…

2021 Bluetooth Market Update

Supported by updated forecasts from ABI Research and insights from several other analyst firms, the Bluetooth Market Update highlights the latest Bluetooth trends and forecasts.

How Bluetooth® Technology is Enabling Safe Return Strategies in a COVID-19 Era

This report shares insight into how Bluetooth® technology is being leveraged by organizations of all sizes to…

Designing and Developing Bluetooth® Internet Gateways

Learn about Bluetooth internet gateways, how to make them secure and scalable, and design and implement your own working prototype gateway and web application for use with either Bluetooth LE Peripherals or with Bluetooth mesh networks.

How to Make Wearables Bluetooth Mesh Provisioners

Learn how to create applications for smartwatches and other platforms that can monitor and control nodes in a Bluetooth mesh network.

Lighting as a Platform

See how connected lighting systems are being used as a platform to enable advanced building services like wayfinding, asset tracking, and space utilization to improve the ROI of smart building investments.

An Introduction to the Bluetooth Mesh Proxy Function

Learn how to create applications for smartphones and other platforms which can monitor and control nodes in a Bluetooth mesh network.

Build a Smarter Building with Blue

See how Bluetooth increases reliability, reduces costs, and enhances your smart building ROI.

 Get Help