Communication latencies of Apple push notification messages relevant for delivery of time-critical information to anesthesia providers.
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Date
2013-07-24
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Abstract
BACKGROUND Tablet computers and smart phones have gained popularity in anesthesia departments for educational and patient care purposes VigiVU is an iOS application developed at Vanderbilt University for remote viewing of perioperative information including text message notifications delivered via the Apple Push Notification APN service In this study we assessed the reliability of the APN service METHODS Custom software was written to send a message every minute to iOS devices iPad iPod Touch and iPhone via wireless local area network WLAN and cellular pathways 24 hours a day over a 4 month period Transmission and receipt times were recorded and batched by days with latencies calculated as their differences The mean SEM and the exact 95 upper confidence limits for the percent of days with 1 prolonged 100 seconds latency were calculated Acceptable performance was defined as mean latency Under30 seconds and 0 5 of latencies 100 seconds Testing conditions included fixed locations of devices in high signal strength locations RESULTS Mean latencies were Under1 second for iPad and iPod devices WLAN and Under4 seconds for iPhone cellular Among 173 000 iPad and iPod latencies none were 100 seconds For iPhone latencies 0 03 0 01 were 100 seconds The 95 upper confidence limits of days with 1 prolonged latency were 42 iPhone and 5 to 8 iPad iPod CONCLUSIONS The APN service was reliable for all studied devices over WLAN and cellular pathways and performance was better than third party paging systems using Internet connections previously investigated using the same criteria However since our study was a best case assessment testing is required at individual sites considering use of this technology for critical messaging Furthermore since the APN service may fail due to Internet or service provider disruptions a backup paging system is recommended if the APN service were to be used for critical messaging
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Keywords
Facility-based health worker, Delayed reporting of events, Usability, Acute or emergency, Provider work planning and scheduling, Provider-to-provider communication, Internet, Installed application