The increasing pervasiveness of wireless technologies in healthcare environments has surpassed the point of simply networking mobile devices to help clinicians deliver more efficient care for patients, with fewer medical errors. In fact, now that medical personnel can access and record data at the point of care—as well as facilitate billing and other administrative tasks—we’re seeing that wireless applications will continue to play a major role as the healthcare market continues to grow.

In a little over a year, we’ve watched wireless healthcare applications blossom from simple apps like SMS—for things like patient support medication and appointment reminders—to the more robust apps, such as wireless CRM for a pharmaceutical sales force, cardiac and blood sugar monitoring, as well as other home monitoring efforts.

Last week, in addition to learning of a simplified procedure for performing PillCam SB 2 capsule endoscopies for the detection of disease in the small intestine—the better approach utilizes two new products to record the wireless signals emitted by the capsule—we also learned that future prosthetic arms may be wireless, now that the Department of Veterans Affairs has announced a three-year study of an advanced artificial arm that easily allows those with severe limb loss to pick up a key or to hold a pencil.

It should be interesting to see how the wireless healthcare gains continue, once the health reform dust has settled a bit.