Modern Care Starts with a Modern Network
Discover how a converged optical and IP network facilitates better experiences for patients, clinicians and staff.
The challenge: A fragmented system
In today's rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem, providers are juggling new regulatory requirements, increasing costs, and activity resulting from mergers and acquisitions — all while trying to increase patient access through growing clinic footprints and virtual care.
While these new care delivery formats make life easier on their patients, it can strain the organization's fragmented, legacy systems, creating significant challenges.
Legacy IT infrastructure within health systems faces numerous challenges, including:
- Bandwidth bottlenecks: High-resolution medical imaging (e.g., MRIs, CT scans), EHR (electronic health records) access and telehealth applications can overwhelm the network and make data transfers between facilities slow and unreliable.
- Operational complexity and cost: Managing disparate networks can be costly and resource-intensive, requiring extensive time investments in maintenance and troubleshooting.
- Security gaps: Fragmented systems make consistent security policy enforcement difficult, increasing vulnerability to threats.
- Limited scalability and innovation: Infrastructure can't support the rapid expansion of digital health services like medical internet of things (MIoT) devices or future AI/ML applications.
- Inefficient clinician workflows: Doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff experience delays that hinder their ability to deliver effective care and diminish the patient experience.
- Severe interoperability issues: Data silos and inconsistent data formats prevent seamless data exchange, cross-facility care coordination and comprehensive data analytics, all of which impact patient care.
These challenges are particularly critical given the slim margins on which healthcare systems operate, making cost reduction and efficiency a top priority.
The solution: Converged optical and IP network
Many of the challenges faced by healthcare providers can be addressed by implementing a converged optical and IP network. This strategic solution unifies disparate systems into a single, high-capacity and intelligent infrastructure, directly tackling critical issues such as inefficient clinician workflows and data fragmentation.
Key components of a converged optical and IP network include:
- DWDM backbone: A high-capacity dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical network forms the core backbone, connecting all hospitals and major clinics using existing fiber infrastructure. This massively increases bandwidth by enabling multiple high-speed data channels over single fiber pairs.
- SDN and NFV: The IP layer is modernized with software-defined networking (SDN) controllers and network function virtualization (NFV). This provides centralized management, automated service provisioning and virtualization of network functions like firewalls, which reduces hardware dependency.
- High-performance IP hardware: Next-generation routers and switches are integrated to provide high throughput and low latency, handling diverse traffic types efficiently.
- Integrated security fabric: Implementing a unified secure platform across the network, leveraging centralized policy enforcement and advanced threat detection to protect sensitive patient data.
- Quality of service (QoS): Robust QoS policies prioritize critical applications (e.g., the EHR, real-time surgical imaging, telehealth) over less time-sensitive traffic.
- Network automation: Deploying automation tools to accelerate service deployment and consolidate monitoring.
Network architecture inherently improves interoperability, facilitating seamless data exchange and communication across previously siloed systems. This directly benefits coordinated care and clinician efficiency, as doctors, nurses and support staff gain instant, reliable access to EHRs, medical images and real-time patient data from any location.
The streamlined workflows allow clinicians to spend more time with patients and less time waiting on systems.
The outcome: A resilient, intelligent and future-ready health system
Converged solutions have the potential to transform healthcare providers into digital leaders by facilitating critical outcomes, including:
- Dramatic bandwidth increase: Network capacity increases tenfold, eliminating bottlenecks, enabling real-time transfer of large medical images and reducing data transfer times by 80 percent.
- Reduced operational costs: Consolidated infrastructure leads to 25 percent annual savings in hardware, power and IT staff time.
- Enhanced security posture: A unified security fabric centralizes policy enforcement and improves visibility, significantly bolstering security.
- Improved patient care and experience:
- Seamless telehealth integration results in a 40 percent increase in usage across the board.
- Instant access to records and images enhances diagnosis turnaround times by 15 percent universally.
- Increased network capacity supports the widespread deployment of remote patient monitoring devices for proactive care.
- Accelerated innovation: Increased network agility allows for new digital health applications, including AI-powered tools, to be deployed in hours rather than days.
- Simplified management: Centralized SDN control reduces complexity, freeing IT staff for top of license and strategic initiatives.
- Future-proofed infrastructure: With a scalable and flexible design, the network is ready to support future advancements in healthcare technology.
- Increased network uptime: Redundant optical paths and intelligent IP routing ensures continuous access to critical patient data.
In conclusion, by investing in a converged optical and IP solution, healthcare providers not only address immediate infrastructure challenges but also establish a robust, secure and AI-ready foundation for the future. This enhances patient care and accelerates providers' progress toward an interconnected healthcare ecosystem.
Sources
- Case study: How modern storage transforms EHR performance
- The WAN way to better health outcomes
- The Economic Benefits of Routed Optical Networks for DCI, Metro, and Long-Haul Applications
- Study Finds Rapid Rise Of Telehealth Use In U.S. Hospitals
- New HHS Study Shows 63-Fold Increase in Medicare Telehealth Utilization During the Pandemic
- The Impact of a Health IT Changeover on Medical Imaging Department Work Processes and Turnaround Times
- Does the picture archiving and communication system affect report turnaround time in the radiology department of King Khalid Hospital in Saudi Arabia?
- Impact of PACS on Dictation Turnaround Time and Productivity
- Improving Emergency Department Flow: Reducing Turnaround Time for Emergent CT Scans
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This report is compiled from surveys WWT Research conducts with clients and internal experts; conversations and engagements with current and prospective clients, partners and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs); and knowledge acquired through lab work in the Advanced Technology Center and real-world client project experience. WWT provides this report "AS-IS" and disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information.