The St. Joseph Health System just awarded a $1 million contract to Embee Technologies to add a wireless network at three hospitals including the one in Orange. Being the Gadgetress, I had to find out if this means I can use my Wi-Fi laptop next time I’m at the hospital. I’m thinking about compiling a list of high-tech doctors, dentists, hospitals in OC just to help me figure out who to go to. A sort of ‘hire a geek’ with input from you dear readers.

For visitors and patients, the answer is Embee can install a public hot spot but it will be up to St. Joseph’s to decide. The wireless network will let doctors and hospital staff use Wi-Fi to do stuff like look up and send patient health records electronically on a laptop or PDA. Because this involves private information, everything must be secure enough to meet the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.

Embee, an Irvine company that specializes in setting up networks for health care systems, will use Cisco Systems hardware to put 600 wireless access points at the three hospitals (the other two are in Santa Rosa and Napa).

Help me start my ‘Hire a geek’ list. Tell me who should be considered and what techie tools do they use to make our lives easier or, at least, more interesting. Got any dentists who use high-tech cameras to let you see what’s inside your mouth? Hairstylists who let you make appointments by e-mail? Plumbers who don’t make you wait around for six hours but will text message you 15 minutes before they show up? Bring them on! Thanks!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.