Clinic Prescribes Aerohive for Medical Staff

Challenge

The speed at which medical staff at the hospitals can diagnose, refer and treat patients is critical. Placing accurate, up-to-date medical information into a caregiver’s hands at a patient’s bedside is proven to greatly improve patient care and treatment accuracy while also reducing the cost of care.

Wireless LANs (WLANs) play a large role in this. By providing real-time access to critical data such as x-rays, scans and blood test results, from the ward or in surgery, allows medics to make fast, accurate decisions, and immediately discuss treatment plans with patients. According to Ralf Sandner, IT manager for KKH Erding Dorfen, “Wireless connectivity is now essential to the provision of high quality healthcare.”

In addition to immediate efficiency and productivity savings for superior patient care, KKH Erding Dorfen also recognized the longer term benefits of the technology for reducing waiting lists and increasing the availability of its GPs.

KKH Erding Dorfen therefore set about provisioning a wireless network that would support the immediate needs of medical staff, and which would easily scale, in the future, to become the primary network for administrative staff, consultants, and patients. All this, with minimal disruption to the IT department’s day-to-day operational load.

Solution
Having reviewed three WLAN vendors, including controller-based solutions from Extricom and Aruba, KKH Erding Dorfen selected Aerohive’s controller-less architecture to provide its mission-critical wireless network.

Sandner explained, “With wireless the primary network connection for medical applications, resilience and availability become key performance indicators.”

Eliminating the need for controllers completely, Aerohive’s unique architecture was, therefore, a key advantage in the tender process. The technology removes this single point of failure to provide advanced levels of robustness and, furthermore, takes away a costly barrier to scaling the wireless network.

“The intuitive HiveAPs eliminate the need for a controller, ensuring that when we want to scale or increase the density of the network, we can do so without cost or technical constraints,” continued Sandner. “During the tender process, it was quickly apparent that Aerohive’s controller-less solution has the greatest resilience and failover in the market.”

In initial trials, Aerohive’s WLAN demonstrated seamless roaming and high quality of service, whilst its ease of deployment, manageability and scalability were equally compelling features. Aerohive’s Cooperative Control, a unique protocol that enables APs to manage client connectivity and dynamically create mesh networks in case of failover, was also a key advantage.

Results

Within just four weeks, the WLAN had been implemented into both hospitals. Centrally managed with Aerohive’s network management appliance, HiveManager, KKH Erding Dorfen’s IT department can easily configure and monitor network performance, and quickly remediate any client-network connectivity issues.

Now in place, the WLAN is delivering connectivity throughout the Clinic’s two hospitals, enabling medical staff to access diagnostic applications and patient records from the bedside, improving the speed and precision of diagnosis and treatment. Aerohive’s Dynamic Airtime Scheduling ensures the best possible quality of service for the applications and applies an Ethernet-like determinism to the network.

Sandner commented, “The ability for medical staff to access patient information from their bedside, and apply immediate diagnosis and treatment, adds considerably to the productivity and efficiency of both hospitals.”

“The experience is seamless, intuitive and puts little demand on operational resources. Value-add features such as QoS and per-AP licensing, give us the confidence that we’ve built a wireless network for the future,” concluded Sandner.