Hitting the badge button and saying a name triggers a powerful server-based application that matches the name spoken with a database entry. It then locates that person on the network, activates their badges and starts the conversation, which takes place using Voice-Over-Internet Protocol or VOIP–meaning the voices are converted to bits and transmitted over a computer network. …

“Once we had a prototype, we started doing research into who might want to use a product like this,” Lang says. “At one point we had nothing more than a bunch of PowerPoint slides, that we showed to health care organizations, and we had nurses in tears saying ‘Where has this been all of my life?’” …

It turns out that communication in a hospital is often an amazingly inefficient affair. … All that time, otherwise lost waiting for instructions or other communication, adds up. One study by the First Consulting Group, a healthcare consultancy based in Long Beach, Calif., found that when the 300-bed St. Agnes Healthcare facility in Baltimore deployed the Vocera system, its nurses saved more than 1,100 hours a year, while the entire organization saved some 3,400 hours.

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