With some 46,000 patients admitted to the hospital every year, a solution was sought to reduce the amount of time clinicians spent walking through the wards to consult each other.

About 12 months ago the hospital began a trial of wireless technology and installed the infrastructure to support access to patient records and a rapid voice communication system using portable badges rather than phones.

Some 80 registrars, surgeons, visiting medical practitioners and nurses were involved in the trial.

The hospital's director of information services, Dr. Ralph Hanson, said his department is not focused on putting in IT for IT's sake and makes sure it assists clinicians in doing their job.

"We know IT brings benefits to health care delivery and we have made great progress over the past decade [and] done it in an environment where there is a strong service improvement culture," Hanson said. "You have to have it all in sync together with clinicians and their processes. We can't put systems in that lock doctors and nurses down to desks and if we don't implement systems to facilitate mobility we are not providing the best service."