Rural Healthcare Pilot Program
A New Network Vision
Studies show that increased interconnectivity and more robust and flexible networks in the healthcare industry lead to better overall healthcare: “Mortality rates are 7.2% LOWER in the ‘most wired’ hospitals” Hospitals and Health Networks magazine. Not only do patients receive better care in these hospitals, but the healthcare providers see that care positively affect their bottom line. High-performance, high-bandwidth connectivity is increasingly critical for rural healthcare institutions. A solution is needed that delivers this connectivity over longer distances, with bandwidth that meets the needs of emerging applications.

Challenges

Traditionally, rural healthcare institutions have been heroic in their efforts to provide state-of-the-art care despite challenges resulting from their distance from metro locations and a lack of technology funding. This care is tied to the ability to run applications—such as Mobility, PACS, EMR, Asset Tracking and Remote Diagnosis—that require a high-performance network.

As rural healthcare providers face mounting IT pressures, increased electronic healthcare applications and compliance requirements are driving exponential increases in storage, traffic demand, and data replication for continuity of operations and disaster recovery. Patient care based on electronic information requires high bandwidth, high performance, and low-latency connectivity.

Solution

With the Federal Communications Commission Rural Health Care Pilot Program, rural institutions will now have the means to build new networks that enable flexible, high-bandwidth connectivity for key electronic health applications that can positively affect patient care and save lives while saving costs over time.

Ciena's offerings

Ciena's assured, adaptive optical network solutions form a practical architecture ideal for electronic healthcare applications, leveraging technologies such as Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), optical Ethernet transport, and storage over SONET/SDH. An adaptive network optimizes and switches traffic at the lowest possible layer—providing the lowest latency, maximum throughput and applications transparency. As a network that is always available and never drops packets, these flexible networks connect healthcare providers with critical information, exactly when and where needed. Solutions from Ciena's adaptive network architecture are qualified by all major storage vendors, including EMC®, IBM®, Hitachi Data Systems®, McData® and Qlogic®.

Benefits

 

  • Specialization in network solutions that optimize Ethernet network service delivery from access to core
    • Iowa Health System's large fiber optic network consisting of Ciena's Carrier Ethernet Solutions platforms
    • Corporate partnership with active participation in the Internet2 RHCPP initiative
    • Carrier-class network solutions in world’s largest carrier, government and enterprise networks
  • A full range of advanced network technologies to serve most every connectivity type:
    • End-to-end architecture of advanced optical and Ethernet platforms that form resilient, high-bandwidth networks
    • Ethernet service delivery over any media (fiber, copper, TDM) to enable migration from legacy network architectures
    • WDM and SONET with the most flexible, adaptable and assured approach to optical networking
  • Strong relationships with key partners that serve the rural healthcare markets:
    • Regional networks and connectors
    • Carriers (Tier 1 and Regional)