As one of the largest health care providers in the country, Carolinas HealthCare System has installed a large Wi-Fi network that it is still expanding -- even as it contemplates the use of newer wireless technologies such as RFID to improve efficiency.

During the past two years, Charlotte, N.C.-based Carolinas has deployed more than 500 wireless access points for 802.11b and 802.11g networks, providing wireless coverage for more than 1.5 million square feet of space, said Craig Richardville, vice president of information systems. The organization expects to add another 500 access points during the next 18 months to help provide wireless access for its 14 hospitals and other facilities, which provide 4,300 licensed beds throughout North and South Carolina.

The system allows doctors and nurses that are part of a staff of 25,000 to share lab results and patient orders via any Pocket PC handheld device. The advantage of using Pocket PCs is that Carolinas-employed physicians, as well as community-based physicians, have a wide range of handheld choices, Richardville said.

Voice over IP has been enabled for 100 respiratory therapists and dietary personnel, as part of a trial effort to move toward hands-free voice-enabled devices that should help care workers do their jobs more easily, he said.

The next step for VoIP is to allow voice communications over Wi-Fi so that doctors and other workers can move between networks easily, and a call can be easily re-established if it is dropped. Carolinas also wants to make sure doctors can stay connected when off campus, which means Richardville and his staff are working with cellular service providers to come up with effective technologies that will improve connectivity for smart phones or other devices.

"The intent is that it would be no different to being on campus with Wi-Fi or off campus with cellular," he said.

Coming in the next few months is a pilot program that will use RFID to track valuable clinical equipment that is portable and needs to be easily located for repairs and maintenance, Richardville said. Eventually, the health care provider envisions using RFID to track patients, with an RFID chip installed in a patient"s wristband.

"We"re improving accessibility and allowing access in a mobile environment where we typically wouldn"t have information," Richardville said. "It"s all worked very successfully."

Richardville could not estimate the total cost of the Wi-Fi network or related wireless technology but said there is soft value in "giving people opportunities to interact with each other and applications that we can"t do any other way."

Carolinas relies on Cisco Systems Inc. access points and other network gear, primarily because it chose Cisco over other large vendors such as Nortel Networks Ltd. and Avaya Inc., Richardville said.

He said Cisco has proved to be "higher value, more stable and leading edge."