Guest Column | March 29, 2018

How Real-Time Healthcare Benefits From Scalable, Reliable, Secure Networks

By Gary Holland, Verticals Marketing, IP Optical Networks (ION), Nokia

Figure 1. Private network and private/hybrid cloud supporting a RTHS
Figure 1. Private network and private/hybrid cloud supporting a RTHS

A state-of-the-art private network allows healthcare organizations to benefit from a wide range of applications — such as cloud-based services, secure internet-connected medical devices and patient care management platforms — to enhance and extend collaboration and workflows across the entire healthcare system. The right network can enable healthcare organizations to become what’s known as a real-time healthcare system (RTHS).

Network infrastructure serves as the key building block for the implementation of a private/hybrid cloud that healthcare organizations can use to connect their facilities, devices, staff and patients in a reliable, secure and scalable way; the essence of an RTHS.

For many healthcare enterprises, a private network supports their information and communications technology (ICT) and cloud strategy to enable a more agile, flexible and cost-efficient RTHS. It also enables them to maintain control and privacy of patient electronic health records (EHRs) and other sensitive medical data in the cloud era.

Real-Time Networks For Real-Time Healthcare And The Cloud

The patient experience is streamlined when hospitals, clinics and other healthcare sites are connected. Diagnoses, treatments, prescriptions and other critical information are available to healthcare professionals at each stage of patient care and improving outcomes. Healthcare workflows and processes are also accelerated and enhanced through increased digitization, automation and better integration.

A typical private network supporting RTHS and the cloud is shown in Figure 1. It combines high speed, secure and reliable optical networking between primary hospitals and data centers with an Internet Protocol/Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) overlay to control traffic and provide quality of service for RTHS applications.

The private network can connect to regional hospitals and healthcare sites using existing virtual private networks (VPNs). It can also be enhanced with software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology to simplify and reduce the cost of connecting small healthcare sites and clinics. Secure internet connections to hybrid cloud services and data centers provide additional capacity when needed as well as enable remote monitoring and telemedicine for patients in the community.

In this way, a private network can help healthcare enterprises to transform their IT and enhance patient care by:

  • improving workflows and delivering consistent experiences for clinicians regardless of access, location or application
  • enabling clinicians to collaborate and access patient records and medical images in real-time using unified voice, video and data communications
  • implementing a private cloud to virtualize their it, enabling them to introduce new medical services and applications in days rather than months

The Role Of A Private Network In A Major Level 1 Trauma Network

For one of the largest Level 1 trauma networks in the United States — with 12 hospitals and 450 sites of care — a private network has been essential to:

  • delivering innovative services that improve patient outcomes and ease the workload on clinicians
  • supporting an electronic intensive care unit to monitor patients in multiple facilities from one centralized command center
  • ensuring healthcare applications are always available when needed
  • performing incremental it upgrades to support new applications and devices
  • saving up to 40 percent on capital expenditures by avoiding costly it “rip and replace”

The private network gave the organization the agility to implement new medical applications faster and at lower costs, which allowed for more coordinated workflows within the organization and improved care for patients.

Agility, Flexibility, And Cost Efficiency For RTHS And The Cloud

As healthcare enterprises move to RTHS and the cloud, they need more flexible and agile networks. They also need more efficient and cost-effective solutions to connect smaller healthcare sites, as well as secure internet and mobile connectivity to enable remote monitoring and telemedicine. A private network that combines existing and new technologies provides a more agile, flexible and cost-efficient solution for RTHS while ensuring the scalability, reliability and security that healthcare enterprises need in the cloud era.