Pagers, Once Essential Devices, to Vanish From U.K. Hospitals
- More than one in 10 of the world’s pagers used by the NHS
- Mobile phones, apps to replace ‘outdated’ devices, NHS says
A text message is sent on a pager.
Photographer: Gino Domenico/Bloomberg
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One of the world’s biggest users of pagers, the U.K. National Health Service, is giving up the devices decades after smartphones made them mostly obsolete.
Pagers, the portable communications unit also known as a beeper popular three decades ago, will be switched off for hospital doctors and staff by the end of 2021, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Saturday. The sprawling NHS now accounts for almost one in 10 pagers in use globally.