King Khalid University Hospital Links State-Of-The-Art Medical Imaging Applications With Aruba Networks' 802.11n Solution From ASACO-IT

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 18 Jun 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN), a global leader in wireless LANs and secure mobility solutions, announced that Saudi Arabia's King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH), the teaching hospital of King Saud University, has deployed Aruba's high-speed 802.11n Wi-Fi and security solutions for PACS, RIS, and HIS applications at its facilities in Riyadh. KKUH is the largest teaching hospital in the Kingdom, with more than 800 beds and 500 medical specialists. The network was deployed by ASACO-IT (Ahd Al-Saudia Company), an authorized Aruba partner in Saudi Arabia.

The hospital required a single wireless network capable of simultaneously delivering staff and guest Internet access, PACS and RIS based medical imaging, HIS data, and e-mail. PACS data consist of medical images from positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, computed tomography, and other medical imaging instruments. RIS is used to schedule and track radiology patients, while HIS encompasses patient, clinical, and administrative records. Data from all three systems are needed by mobile physicians and staff on an on-going basis. Aruba and ASACO-IT were selected for the project after demonstrating that the proposed 802.11n solution offered the throughput, low latency, and data integrity required for such data-intensive applications.

"The large physical size of our institution demands that we deploy a Wi-Fi network that could deliver uniform, high quality coverage but would not require constant attention from the IT department," said Dr Ahmed Albarrak, Director of Computer and Informatics at King Saud University Hospitals. "Healthcare facilities are complex environments in which to transmit radio signals. We wanted the network to adjust itself, without any manual intervention, to free our staff to work on patient-facing initiatives. The Aruba network enables our PACS, RIS, HIS, and e-mail applications to run without disruption -- at a patient's bedside, in physicians' offices, in the operating theatres. Regardless of where medical staff are working on our campus, they know they can access key services wirelessly -- and this is all accomplished without any day-to-day impact on the IT department."

The reliable performance of Aruba's 802.11n solution in such a challenging environment is attributable to the Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) technology. ARM delivers a best-in-class wireless experience by automating site surveys and using infrastructure-based controls to optimize the performance of Wi-Fi clients in real-time. Acting on their own, Wi-Fi clients do not always work cooperatively with other clients, or select the optimal band, channel, and access point. These issues are exacerbated in settings with metal shielding and reinforced concrete walls such as imaging centers and laboratories. By controlling how Wi-Fi clients interact, ARM ensures that data, voice, and video applications have sufficient network resources, including airtime, to operate properly.

"The critical nature of healthcare-related applications means that their wireless networks must be fast, agile, and very reliable -- all strengths of Aruba's 802.11n solution," said Ammar Enaya, sales director of Aruba MEA. "802.11n has the potential to provide pervasive coverage across a large and varied site such as KKUH, however, by itself 802.11n is not enough. Automatic management of the RF environment, identity-based security for data integrity, and centralized management to minimize IT overhead are all needed to enable 802.11n to reach its full potential. Aruba integrates all three within a single system, and that is what allows customers like KKUH to rely on Wi-Fi as their primary form of network access."

Source
Aruba Networks