Case Study   South-East Regional Health Authority (Canada)   Leading New Brunswick Healthcare Provider Migrates to Digital Medical Services with Secure, Converged Wired + Wireless Switched Network from 3Com Organization: South-East Regional Health Authority Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada Employees: 2,600 Market Segment: Healthcare Applications: Meditech hospital information system, GE picture archiving systems (PACS), GE medical imaging systems, GE cardiac monitoring system, Microsoft SQL databases The Challenge For 125 years, South-East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) has gone to great lengths to provide southeastern New Brunswick residents with outstanding medical care. Although it operates eight clinics and hospitals, the organization's crown jewel is a full-service 400 bed hospital in Moncton that receives 60,000 visits per year to its emergency room alone. In 1995, recognizing the value of networked communications to the delivery of healthcare services, SERHA installed its first network—a 3Com® data infrastructure—throughout the facility to deliver the initial generation of medical applications. The 3Com solution expedited the treatment of patients, but over time, SERHA realized that newer technologies could further enhance its services as well as contain costs. It then began to deploy today's advanced medical solutions, like digital imaging and paperless administrative and patient tracking systems. These programs, however, generate large volumes of network traffic and extremely large files—a single medical image can be 80 megabytes—which began to tax the legacy network. The workstations of key medical personnel like radiologists, for example, had only 10 Mbps connectivity to the network, which was inadequate to deliver immense digital images like x-rays quickly. Moreover, to support handheld data recording and diagnostic devices, which enable physicians and nurses to enter and access data anywhere in the facility, particularly patients' bedsides, SERHA installed access points to build a wireless network. As more and more patient data was transmitted throughout the facility via wireless links, the hospital needed to expand its wireless systems to support the additional traffic. It also had to bolster the security of its wireless solutions to ensure the privacy of sensitive medical information, ensuring that only authorized staff access patient information. To sustain its security and level of care, SERHA needed to enhance the flow of information throughout the hospital. It required high-performance networking solutions that could easily deliver the most sophisticated and bandwidth-intensive medical applications to the facility's 1,600 workstations and desktops. The system had to provide functionality like virtual LANs (VLANs) to segment the network for greater efficiency, and scalability to ensure SERHA of the bandwidth to support tomorrow's applications without costly forklift upgrades. Finally, the organization needed to offer full wireless roaming and mobility along with the secure wireless links to support nearly 400 laptops and handheld devices like PDAs and scanners, but without adding administrative complexity and costs. Why 3Com Solutions To meet its needs, SERHA issued an RFP for networking solutions, to which Cisco, Nortel, and 3Com responded. After evaluating these vendors' products, the healthcare organization decided to remain with 3Com. "3Com offered us an ideal solution at the best price," said Jacques Lirette, chief information officer, South-East Regional Health Authority. "Our 3Com systems have been very reliable, and we were impressed with the support that 3Com has provided us. With our patients' well-being at stake, we opted to stay with a proven vendor." In 2004, to increase the bandwidth of its network backbone by a factor of nearly ten, SERHA installed two 3Com Switch 7700 platforms at its data center, linking them at Gigabit Ethernet speed. Although both are active, should one be removed from service, the other will continue to deliver networking services, ensuring high levels of availability. The healthcare provider also installed 60 48-port 3Com SuperStack® 3 Switch 4400 and 24-port 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR platforms in wiring closets throughout the hospital. These devices have Gigabit Ethernet fiber uplinks to the Switch 7700 systems and deliver 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connectivity to workstations and desktops. To expand its wireless services, provide wireless mobility, bolster their management, and provide RF and authentication security, SERHA replaced many of its legacy wireless fat access points with a 3Com Wireless LAN Controller WX4400 along with 75 3Com Wireless LAN Managed Access Point 2750s. The entire wireless mobility system was deployed and provisioned with the 3Com Wireless Switch Manager application. To power the AP2750 fit access points throughout the facility, the organization relies on the Power over Ethernet capabilities of its SuperStack 3 4400 PWR solutions. The South-East Regional Health Authority deployed the following 3Com products: 3Com® Switch 7700 Read more here 3Com SuperStack® 3 4400 PWR Read more here 3Com SuperStack 3 4400 48-port Read more here 3Com Wireless LAN Controller WX4400 Read more here 3Com Wireless LAN Managed Access Point 2750 Read more here The Benefits SERHA's hospital now has a secure, converged network worthy of any 21st century medical facility. The Gigabit Ethernet backbone provided by the 3Com Switch 7700s effortlessly transport the largest files throughout the hospital without any latency. Clinicians and physicians now can rapidly access x-rays, radiology imagery, and other data from their workstations to ensure quick diagnoses and treatment. Patient-critical systems like a cardiac monitoring solution from GE link directly to the network, ensuring that hospital staff can quickly access the information as needed. The network also supports paperless healthcare delivery. From admission to discharge to outpatient services, all medical records and data for each patient are stored electronically. "3Com enabled us to improve our productivity and responsiveness by supporting a hospital-wide information infrastructure," said Lirette. "In addition to streamlining the delivery of medical services, we greatly improved the efficiencies of administrative functions. Any patient information is entered into the network only once, after which it is always available to appropriate personnel. This reduces human error and improves the accuracy of our services." The hospital's network also distributes secure connectivity to all the wireless clients and PDAs via the 3Com Wireless LAN Controller WX4400 and 3Com Wireless LAN Managed Access Point 2750s. Using untethered links, caregivers can deploy devices like PDAs, scanners, and about 200 laptop computers on mobile carts to securely enter and access information anywhere in the facility. The wireless networking supports all medical systems, particularly the secure sharing of medical records and nursing care documentation. "Our 3Com networking solutions permit doctors to access a patient's records virtually anywhere in the institution," said Lirette. "Doctors even bring in their own laptops, which they can easily link to the network because our 3Com systems are standards-based. We now have a foundation to improve data collection using barcode technology for medication administration electronic verification which will greatly improve patient safety." Using the 3Com Wireless Switch Manager application with the Wireless LAN Controller, administrators can easily and centrally configure, deploy, and manage the wireless network, ensuring that radio-frequency (RF) coverage and performance are always optimized. Additionally, the 3Com solution provides innovative Identity-Based Networking to deliver services based on user identity rather than ports or devices, ensuring that only authorized staff can access confidential patient data. "Preserving the privacy of patient information is critical for healthcare providers, particularly over wireless links," said Lirette. "Our 3Com platform enables us to detect any rogue access points and assign security policies on a per-user or per-group basis throughout the network. As a result, we can keep all wireless traffic very secure while allowing our caregivers seamless and secure roaming throughout the facility." The hospital's SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR platforms further contain costs by eliminating the need to install power outlets throughout the site to support the many wireless access points. "By converging data and electrical current on one cabling infrastructure, we also avoided the clutter of additional power cords throughout the site," said Lirette. The functionality of the 3Com network allows SERHA to configure the system to the hospital's precise needs. Administrators have created virtual LANs (VLANs) for each floor and department, which keeps traffic local, away from the backbone, whenever possible. As a result, the organization optimized the flow of data throughout the facility, decreasing the amount of traffic crossing the backbone and reducing the prospect of any network bottlenecks. Moreover, the 3Com 7700 switches are easily scalable to 10-Gigabit Ethernet performance, enabling the hospital to support even greater levels of traffic as the facility expands its services and deploys new applications. "Thanks to 3Com, we improved communications and the flow of information between physicians, nurses, specialists, and administrators," concluded Lirette. "We linked all of our services and data into one enterprise-wide system. And we provided our caregivers with fast, secure access to all medical records and the most advanced resources, whether in their offices or by a patient's bed. This is how to deliver healthcare quickly, effectively, and economically." Copyright © 2005 3Com Corporation. 3Com, the 3Com logo, and SuperStack are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.