the problem here is the medical community (especially hospitals) are increasingly pressured to increase productivity to offset cost increases. one way is to automate some of the dreary stuff like monitoring of medical devices in a hospital ward. if youve been in a relatively modern hospital lately, youll find they have wall mounted dashboards which can monitor all the vitals and devices for patients without the nurse needing to walk around and check rooms. this lets them respond to changes as they come up, as opposed to needing to wait till they make their rounds to the room.

this sort of thing needs a network. I'm not familiar, but I thought in the US, HIPPA covered some of this stuff.. not sure how stringent it is, or if it covers scenarios like this.. perhaps it doesnt at all (I am thinking like PCI, where certain data must be encrypted, etc).