Aruba Networks announced that the Rutland Regional
Medical Center, a healthcare provider that serves as the go-to treatment center
for Vermont’s best ski areas, is utilizing the Aruba Networks Mobile Virtual
Enterprise (MOVE) architecture to drive innovation in biomedicine and provide
integration.

 

The 188-bed hospital is in the process of deploying a
Cerner Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, converting diagnostic imaging
(DI) rooms to digital, implementing a nurse call system and tracking patient
health with a variety of biomedical devices all over an Aruba wireless network.

 

The center is also in the process of onboarding many
provider practices into its own system and is seeing costs lowered and lead
times shortened significantly with Aruba Virtual Branch Networking (VBN).

 

“Hospitals today must be aggressive in assessing and
adopting technology in order to ensure a consistently high level of patient
care,” said Michael Catrini, director of information systems,
infrastructure for the regional health leader.

 

“The very nature of healthcare delivery has changed
with the rapidly expanding pool of Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as smartphones
and tablets. Wi-Fi becoming the default access network required a shift from
the traditional port-centric approach to mobility-centric approach. We need to
be able to see and control the user, device and application to help ensure
security and application quality of service. Providers like Rutland can either
drive it or be driven by it. We choose to drive,” Catrini added.

 

The hospital initially deployed wireless as most
organizations do, as an overlay network in public areas such as waiting rooms
and cafeterias. Over time, the use and deployment of that Cisco 802.11a/b/g network
expanded to accommodate more patients, guests and their rapidly increasing
numbers of mobile devices.

 

It worked fine, for a while, but lack of visibility into
traffic on the network and frequent radio interference caused issues. This,
combined with lack of integrated network management capabilities and a growing
pool of patient-care-focused mobile devices, necessitated a change.

 

The Aruba
MOVE architecture is context-aware, taking each user’s device, location and
application into account when applying security and management policies over
the network. This helps organizations ensure secure connectivity for tablets
and smartphones, as well as application performance and network reliability.

 

MOVE further enables network rightsizing for mobility,
allowing access networks to be built at a fraction of the cost of traditionally
overprovisioned and undersubscribed Ethernet-switch based access networks.

 

Placing the highest priority on patient care, Catrini and
his team sought a mobile network solution that would give them both visibility
into and control over all of the traffic on the network, enabling them to
minimize interference from the growing wave of non-critical devices and
optimize performance of their own equipment securely and reliably.

 

They needed a solution that would allow them to host and
manage high densities of mobile clients, including everything from smartphones
and tablets to Ascom and Honeywell communications and location tracking
devices. They also needed to make sure the most critical applications were able
to take priority over other applications.

 

Seeing a trend toward independently practicing providers
joining larger groups owned and operated by the center, it also needed a
solution that would enable remote access with complete transparency as if the
doctors’ offices were in the hospital itself. The Aruba Virtual Branch
Networking (VBN) portfolio filled the bill.

 

“Rutland is among the many innovative healthcare
organizations that have realized a need to shift away from a port-centric model
for mobility to achieve their application performance requirements in an often
challenging care setting,” said Manish Rai, head of industry solutions
marketing for Aruba.

 

Aruba Networks recently announced that Clinton Cards, the
specialist retailer of greetings cards, plush merchandise (soft toys) and
related products in the UK, has deployed
a wireless network based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE)
architecture to ease and speed its stores time-to-market and drive inventory
control processes.

 

Clinton Cards has deployed the Aruba Virtual Branch
Networking (VBN) solution to all of its retail outlets, and has its
headquarters outfitted with an Aruba wireless network as well.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]