Leading Pediatric Medical Center Streamlines
Operations, Saving up to 33% on Maintenance Costs, and Enables IoT
with more than 100,000 Connected Devices
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today
announced that Children’s of Alabama, ranked among the best
pediatric medical centers in the nation by US News & World
Report, is deploying an Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform)-based
network to further the transformation of its healthcare services.
Using Aruba wireless, switching, management and security solutions,
Children’s of Alabama is implementing critical new capabilities
that improve patient experiences, while streamlining operations and
reducing costs.
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Children's of Alabama, ranked as one of
the best pediatric medical centers in the nation, has deployed an
Aruba ESP-based network to streamline operations and improve
patient experiences. (Photo: Children's of Alabama)
Children’s of Alabama provided care for children from every
county in Alabama, 42 other states, and seven foreign countries
last year, representing more than 677,000 outpatient visits and
15,000+ inpatient admissions. One of the largest pediatric
facilities in the country, Children’s operates a main campus of
three million square feet, as well as 14 remote clinics, and is the
primary site for the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s
pediatric medicine, surgery, psychiatry, research and residency
programs.
Children’s had previously used Cisco networking equipment but as
the provider began evolving its patient care, moving to Epic for
electronic health records (EHR), and adding services such as
telemedicine and video-intensive care, remote operations for poison
control and call centers, and location services and wayfinding for
patient-facing applications, the IT team realized it needed a more
secure and cost-effective solution that could grow with its needs.
In addition, with more IoT, specialty medical, and mobile devices
connecting to its network, Children’s needed to determine how to
both secure these devices and leverage their data to enable quicker
decision-making, provide better care and services to patients, and
adapt to the changing COVID-19 pandemic environment.
“Things move so much more quickly now, and our existing
architecture really wasn’t keeping up,” said Children’s of Alabama
CIO, Bob Sarnecki. “We had Wi-Fi capability, but that’s not the
same as really delivering a solid mobile experience for things like
video visits or for securely connecting the approximately 100,000
IoT devices on our network such as workstations, IV pumps, beds and
HVAC controls.”
According to Sarnecki, the IT team had also embarked on an open
architecture journey to allow staff to bring in their own devices –
so long as they could be connected to the network securely – but
this was becoming an increasingly difficult management challenge
with their existing network. The COVID-19 pandemic further
compounded these issues, causing Children’s to accelerate
initiatives for delivering healthcare services remotely.
“We can’t really think in terms of physical locations anymore
because our virtual presence has expanded significantly since
COVID-19 started,” said Sarnecki. “We need to be able to deliver
healthcare securely, wherever and whenever it’s needed.”
These combined challenges led Sarnecki and his team to consult
with partner, Layer 3 Communications, and ultimately, implement an
Aruba network. Using Aruba Wi-Fi 6 Access Points (APs), Remote
Access Points (RAPs), CX-Series Switches and ClearPass for both
wired and wireless network access control, Children’s has unified
operations, management, and security, reducing maintenance costs by
25-33 percent as compared to its previous Cisco network. More
importantly, the new network is enabling a host of healthcare
applications and services that allow Children’s to elevate the
quality of patient care.
“To manage a patient in a modern healthcare environment, we need
a network that can support our EHR transformation, device tracking,
patient tracking, IoT, remote medicine, wayfinding, and
applications we may not even know of yet,” Sarnecki commented.
The Aruba network is becoming central to enabling Children’s
telemedicine program – often the only means of delivering care
during the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit, Children’s immediately
integrated Zoom into its scheduling applications, began sending
patient notifications via text message, and fully integrated its
clinical systems within just three weeks. Children’s is now seeing
about 150 patients each day via telemedicine and the network is
vital to facilitating this service.
In addition, Aruba RAPs have enabled remote work for many of the
staff at Children’s. Employees of Children’s Poison Control Center,
which also services the entire state of Alabama, are using RAPs to
connect their workstations, phones and headsets to the corporate
network from their homes. Telephone triage, IT, and administrative
staff are also using RAPs to work from home securely and
efficiently, and the Children’s heart clinic, located 200 miles
from the main campus, is using them to connect physicians and staff
to critical resources. Sarnecki noted that many of the contractors
Children’s employs for EHR work, who previously would have been
onsite for two-year periods requiring hoteling and associated
expenses, can now be assigned a RAP to conduct their work remotely,
too.
As Children’s continues to enhance patient care, the IT team is
evaluating additional Aruba solutions that can help support the
transformation. With location-ready Aruba APs already installed, IT
is assessing wayfinding applications to help visitors and patients
navigate their way through the facilities, allow quick and easy
patient registration, and enable tracking of both patients and
equipment throughout the hospital. They are also assessing User
Experience Insight (UXI) for easier identification and remediation
of network problems before they occur and to ensure an optimal user
experience.
With its new infrastructure in place, Sarnecki is confident that
he and his team can tackle their ambitious plans for continuing the
medical center’s transformation.
“With our Aruba network, we are building an architecture that
will support state-of-the-art, 21st century healthcare,” he
said.
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is the global
leader in secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud networking solutions
that use AI to automate the network, while harnessing data to drive
powerful business outcomes. With Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform)
and as-a-service options, Aruba takes a cloud-native approach to
helping customers meet their connectivity, security, and financial
requirements across campus, branch, data center, and remote worker
environments, covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN, and wide
area networking (WAN).
To learn more, visit Aruba at www.arubanetworks.com. For
real-time news updates, follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and
for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba
products, visit the Airheads Community at
community.arubanetworks.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210322005093/en/
Kathleen Keith Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
+1-707-529-4507 kathleen.keith@hpe.com
Jennifer Miu Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company +1
650-236-9532 jennifer.miu@hpe.com
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