Infrastructure

The cabling installed today has to meet the requirements of the cabling for tomorrow.
Most data centers are planning for speeds of 10-Gigabit Ethernet.

Data centers are basically big computer rooms that use optimized infrastructure components to support servers, storage and networking equipment devices. Such centers have grown to consume about 2 percent of the total U.S. electrical usage and are forecast to consume 9 percent of the U.S. total by the year 2020.

Grove Hill’s new cabling infrastructure supports both its bandwidth and flexibility needs in a single solution.

A common dilemma for IT professionals is selecting a network infrastructure that can offer future-proof support of the organization’s most bandwidth-intensive applications and users without over compensating for less speed-critical connectivity needs. A healthcare organization could install multiple channels of varying cable types and performance levels or, as Connecticut-based Grove Hill Medical Center did – choose a single cabling solution.

Grove Hill Medical Center offers services ranging from routine check-ups to the latest diagnostic imaging. Home to more than 70 physicians, Grove Hill covers 19 medical specialties, including cardiology, oncology, orthopedics and radiology, as well as housing administrative and patient-service offices. When Grove Hill began the upgrade to its network cabling infrastructure, it did so with a wide range of network applications, users and challenges in mind.

Leading healthcare organization explores the benefits and challenges of voice-over-Internet-protocol technology.

When ProMedica Health Systems of Ohio and Michigan broke ground on its largest construction effort to date – a state-of-the-art campus at Toledo Hospital and Toledo Children’s Hospital – it also overhauled its 20-year-old phone system, deploying a voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) network.

"We knew that VoIP technology promised countless business benefits well suited to healthcare services," explains Bruce Meyer, technical coordinator for the voice-and-data infrastructure at ProMedica Health Systems. "We also knew that with those benefits came increased risk of system downtime and performance problems. In an emergency situation, our staff doesn’t have the luxury of time to find another phone if theirs is not working, so we needed an effective, reliable solution that we could manage end to end."

Replacing aging workstations with state-of-the-art technology yields big improvements for an Arizona-based group of clinics.

For Andrew Willy, information-systems manager with Scottsdale Medical Imaging, there was only one way to confront the aging workstations on which radiologists relied for diagnosing everything from broken legs to cancer. New equipment was needed.

In 25 years of serving patients and the medical community at 10 clinics spread across the East Valley area of Phoenix, the group had enjoyed ongoing success with equipment from HP – and Willy decided to stay with the vendor's products. "Having the right technology sets the foundation for the clinic to provide quality medical care for each patient that walks through its doors," he says.

Not having a centralized dashboard or management console for monitoring the network and installing updates can put a strain on the IT and security teams, forcing them to spend a majority of their time and budget on maintenance. The number of machines distributed throughout the organization compounds this issue, as the IT staff must travel to each location to fix problems and manually install upgrades and updates.

Concerned about malware and other security issues, Health First settled on a solution that allows IT to set granular, flexible Internet usage policies for devices, as well as specific users and groups.

An acute care facility implements a back-office solution to deal with repetitive tasks and to maximize its intranet.

Like many hospitals, South County Hospital (SCH) strives to provide high-quality, efficient patient care while maintaining smooth operations. This means the health of the hospital’s business side and information technology (IT) is just as important as the clinical side.

An interoperability platform maintains existing IT “bright spots” while providing secure access to patient information.

UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) has earned recognition as the top hospital in Massachusetts, second in the nation for cardiac care, and as a top-10 hospital for quality and safety by the University Health System Consortium, among other honors. Behind the scenes, however, the health system was becoming increasingly constrained by an aging information technology (IT) infrastructure, as well as internal processes and a medical record system that are primarily paper-based