Posted on Thu, Feb 03, 2011 @ 11:58 AM
(as seen on BestinUC.com)
If you want to discover the latest insight from leaders in the IT space on the top concerns of IT in the healthcare industry, make sure you attend the HIMSS Healthcare webinar on Monday, February 7th at 1pm CST.
Many IT specialists are familiar with the special challenges faced when deploying technologies in healthcare facilities and in an hour-long webinar, three expert panelists will discuss:
1. How to best deal with RF interference
2. Wi-Fi deployment best practices in healthcare
3. Delivering reliable wireless performance at range at the lowest cost with the fewest access points
The webinar is free, so register now!
In the meantime be sure to try our free Aerohive wi-fi planning tool to learn more about deploying wi-fi in enterprise environments. Aerohive HiveManager enables simple RF planning and doesn't require a controller or an overlay network.
Here’s an abstract of the upcoming webinar (taken from the HIMSS website):
Healthcare is screaming for better wireless. From EMR/EHR applications to BCMA carts, wireless-enabled infusion pumps to wireless nurse call systems, telemetry and bedside monitoring to location tracking and even guest access, everyone wants wireless. The problem is, healthcare environments are among the worst places to get wireless to consistently work as advertised. RF interference, obstacles, obstructions along with a myriad of new client devices with lousy Wi-Fi implementations all amount to a big headache for IT staff. This Webinar will highlight recent technical advances that help make these problems go away. Our panel of subject matter experts with actual Wi-Fi experience will discuss their experiences and provide practical advice on topics such as streamlining deployment, delivering stronger signals with fewer APs, automatically mitigating interference and filling coverage holes without running more Ethernet cabling everywhere.
Posted on Wed, Dec 08, 2010 @ 03:06 PM
by Scott Strochak, President & CEO
When it comes to information technology in the healthcare industry, security is a top priority. HIPAA laws are continually in mind as IT directors make technological decisions and implement new solutions. Today’s technological advances, such as telehealth and the availability of mobile technology can improve healthcare, increase speed of care and patient/doctor communication and simplify processes, but the reliability and security of technology is key.
With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act came an allocation of $20 billion towards electronic medical records. Financial incentives were put in place to encourage healthcare institutions to implement electronic records.
The push for electronic medical records, coupled with an increase in the number of healthcare professionals utilizing mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, the demand for Wi-Fi has increased 60 percent since last year.
Healthcare institutions face several challenges when implementing Wi-Fi. Wireless network providers, like Aerohive Networks are working to offer solutions to challenges faced by the healthcare industry. Here are a few examples:
- Challenge: High availability – Healthcare institutions need a wireless solution that will provide service to mobile caregivers, allowing access to patient data on mobile devices. WLANs funnel data traffic through a controller, which can cause a single point of failure. To provide high availability, a network solution must provide redundancy without a single point of failure by eliminating the controller.
- Solution: The Aerohive wireless architecture APs require no network controllers. Software in Aerohive’s APs allow them to automatically discover one another as they are added or removed from the network.
- Challenge: Ensuring HIPAA confidentiality. Providing highly available, reliable wireless networking while complying with HIPAA confidentiality is crucial.
- Solution: 802.11n standards require the support of 802.11n/WPA2 encryption and authentication algorithms based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Aerohive WLANs go beyond the 802.11 standards to automate, secure, and manage Wi-Fi networks.
With Aerohive, network management can be handled from a single workstation, in either appliance or the “cloud.” Aerohive allows healthcare institutions to cut costs on Wi-Fi by up to 75%, improve network availability, reliability and flexibility. The Aerohive solution is easily scalable with a per-AP price.
One of our customers, a management company in Oregon that owns a chain of retirement living communities, was implementing new wireless patient care services applications and were looking for a wireless LAN solution to support them. This company wanted something easy to deploy and manage across the enterprise, including 144 senior living communities.
After a year of research, our customer finally decided on Aerohive for their first location in McLane, VA, because the "controller-less" architecture allowed them to manage the entire enterprise WLAN from a single administrative interface, with robust security and throughput. All this for a fraction of the cost the competitors were offering.
We're excited about our Aerohive relationship and their push into the health care space. They make very reliable, easy to manage products with a lower TCO than most other products on the market. Hopefully we can do our little part to make healthcare more affordable by helping healthcare organizations lower than costs to do business.
We can help you determine the right Wi-Fi solution to fit your organizations needs. For more information on Aerohive, or other networking products and services, contact us.
For more information on the challenges facing healthcare institutions when it comes to wireless technology, download this TMC whitepaper.