Watching a report this morning a UK hospital has decided to relax the ban of mobile phone use within the hospital.

Research now shows that mobile phones don’t actually cause interference with sensitive equipment.

This is great news for patients and visitors alike wanting to share news or communicate more freely with friends and relatives.

Points have been made about the noise issue and possible annoyance of mobile phones in hospitals but radios and TV’s are not banned? However the hospital does ask that people with mobile phones turn the ringtone to ’silent’ and do not use their cameras.

This is not likely to become widespread however because of contracts in place with Patient-Line the company responsible for providing the ‘media centre’ type telephone systems already in place through most UK hospitals.

The contract does not allow the hospital to allow people to use mobile phones in conjunction with their system.

Patient-Line has already recently been criticised for increasing the rate of their phone systems and is likely to come under scrutiny again for not allowing people to use their own phones if the hospital does not have a problem with it.

One concern over the possible widespread use of mobile phones by patients and visitors is the cost of charging the phones. If a patient is allowed to plug their phone in overnight, all will want to do the same and can the NHS afford to pay for charging potentially thousands of mobile phones per day?