Rural Hospital Busts Data Silos For EMRs

Before Barnes-Kasson Hospital in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania integrated its computing infrastructure with Futura Mobility, “We had silos of technology,” CIO John Sepcoski, Jr., recalls. There was no way to link those silos into a cohesive, hospital-wide system that could support electronic medical records (EMRs). With the government’s push toward EMRs, Sepcoski and his team determined the hospital’s best option was to have a single-source software solution that worked in real time. “Futura’s hardware implementation does that, tying everything together,” he explains.

BREAKING THE BOTTLENECK

When looking at the hospital’s infrastructure, Sepcoski knew cabling would be the bottleneck. “The cabling layer is responsible for the ultimate transmission of data over network communications media,” he explains. “Our cabling and switching network wasn’t robust enough to handle EMR data requirements. We expected traffic on our network would multiply by at least a factor of five.”

For example, after the conversion, radiology exams would be viewable in every examination room. Previously, they were viewable only in the radiology department. Embracing EMRs meant sending those charts to mobile devices and workstations through the cabling network rather than walking them to wherever they were needed. So, working with Futura, approximately 20 miles of new 40GM OM3 fiber was run throughout the hospital, replacing the existing Cat5 Ethernet and OM1 fiber. The entire network was designed with redundant core and distribution layers of OM3 fiber running to the access layers, the facility’s WLAN, and the public Wi-Fi.

Download this document to read this case study in its entirety.