Chicago hospitals offer Internet options

Like health organizations in other parts of the country, a growing number of Chicago's hospitals are making Internet connectivity an integral part of a patient's stay. For example, at University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital, patients get an entertainment and education system, based around a 42-inch LCD television, which allows patients to surf the Net and get e-mail, along with downloading movies, reviewing educational content and playing games from their beds. Comer, along with Bernard A. Mitchell Hospital, is also rolling out free WiFi connections that visitors bearing laptops are allowed to use. 

Another health system, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH), is implementing out a campus-wide Internet access system for hospitals over the next two years; Glenbrook Hospital will have WiFi by 2008 and Highland Park by 2009. The system won't just be WiFi oriented, however--it will cover all wireless devices, including cell phone and pagers.

ENH is doing more than connecting patients, however. It also offers a service it calls ENHfirst, a patient information portal allowing patients to view lab, X-ray and EKG results, e-mail their doctor, schedule appointments, renew medications and pay hospital and doctor bills.

To get more information on these deployments:
- read this piece from the Chicago Tribune

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