The use of wireless medical telemetry in hospitals is expanding as one way to help meet the ever-rising cost of health care. As users of medical devices know from experience, the radio signals transmitted from the patient to the monitoring station are vulnerable to electromagnetic interference (EMI), which can present a real risk to patients being monitored.If these signals are interfered with or lost while the patient is suffering a significant adverse health event (cardiac arrhythmia, for example), the medical response could be delayed, and serious patient consequences are likely to result. Because of the importance of these signals and the likelihood of EMI with these vital transmissions, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), medical device manufacturers, and the health care community banded together to examine the EMI issue with wireless medical telemetry and developed solutions to minimize the risks to patients posed by EMI.