FCC grants conditional waiver to support WMTS
In coordinated efforts between the American Society for Health Care Engineering of the American Hospital Association, TerreStar, GE Healthcare and Philips Healthcare, the Federal Communication Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau on April 30 adopted a conditional waiver to allow TerreStar to begin offering wireless medical telemetry services (WMTS) in the 1.4 GHz band. This will help ensure that traditional health facilities have more spectrum to meet a surge of additional monitoring demands. It also will enable the development and use of monitoring services in nontraditional settings. The waiver includes strict conditions requiring TerreStar to use its licensed spectrum for WMTS.
FGI to create guidelines for emergency conditions
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and requests from the field, the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) announced it is convening a special committee to assemble design guidance for facilities during emergency situations caused by weather, pandemics, wildfires and other emergency situations. The committee will be responsible for creating a white paper with draft guidelines requirements and lessons learned from past local and national emergencies such as COVID-19. This white paper will become the basis for a new guidelines standard on design of facilities that can readily be adapted during emergency conditions. FGI’s goal is to have the peer-reviewed white paper available by the end of this summer and to release the supplemental guidelines standard in early 2022.
