Keep new technology leashed until you learn its behavior

Given the Obama administration’s goal of improving healthcare information technology systems, many hospitals are taking a hard look at how medical equipment interacts with such networks.

The way these items coexist—in harmony, one hopes—is defined as “convergence.” It’s a new term because up until a few years ago, most patient monitoring systems and other devices plugged into the wall and worked on their own. Now, many of these machines send information directly into the hospital’s main network and interact with software such as electronic recordkeeping programs.