Healthcare Mobility: Rugged Or Commercial Devices?

By Doug Brown, Vertical Marketing Manager, Honeywell Scanning & Mobility

The average acute care hospital environment is typically one of the tougher settings for any handheld mobile solution to thrive and survive.  There are generally hard floors throughout, so any accidental drop is going to be met with the maximum impact. Add that to the use of aggressive disinfecting chemicals that are required to maintain a safe working atmosphere for patients and clinicians and you will likely find that most unprotected commercial devices will fail much earlier than expected. 

While rugged devices by definition were designed to survive the extreme conditions typical in warehouses or on delivery trucks, it is only recently that the combination of rugged features with hospital grade disinfectant chemical resistance came together. These early healthcare-ready rugged devices are surviving well in the hospital environment but are clearly not as ergonomic or user friendly as smartphones. So an obvious question is — can hospitals have the best of both worlds, the enormous flexibility of a smartphone and the ruggedness required in a healthcare setting?

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