P2S Magazine Issue 1 | Page 11

A H E A LT H Y I N T E R S E CT I O N : T E C H N O LO GY A N D M E P D ES I G N I N H E A LT H CA R E MEP and Technology design for healthcare facilities were some of our fastest growing services of 2017 and we expect 2018 to be no different. The U.S. healthcare market is rapidly expanding and continuously transforming, which means that designing flexible, care-enhancing and energy efficient systems with the latest technology, is more important now than ever. We spoke with P2S Senior Technology System Designer, John Kacperski, and Healthcare Engineering Group Leader, Mikhail Fuks, to get their thoughts on current and future MEPT design trends and the areas in which MEP and Technology design overlap in the healthcare market. What types of technology systems do you design for healthcare facilities? JK: I design voice, data and wireless networks, patient and guest Wi-Fi, PA systems, media displays and patient entertainment systems. We also design IP backbone that ties to radiology system interfaces, system monitoring for gases, environmental monitoring and controls security surveillance, doctor’s dictation systems, nurse-call systems and telemetry interfaces. Have healthcare facilities followed the same trend of IP converged systems and analytics as other facilities have? JK: Healthcare facilities actually set the trend of adopting IP converged systems and that’s because of the government mandate to adopt Electronic Health Records (EHR) to create interoperability between healthcare facilities. MF: A system like Kaiser has hundreds of medical facilities. You may live near one location, but also visit another location because it’s closer to work. Or you may have an emergency and need to go to the closest facility to you at that moment. Before electronic records, medical records were pieces of paper kept safe by providers. A practitioner would have to call to get those records faxed and it would take some time. During that 11