Conquest Hospital implements Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solution to support digital evolution
Network transformation enhances services
Conquest Hospital in East Sussex has begun a network transformation to accommodate the digital evolution of medicine and healthcare delivery to better serve its patients and staff.
As a result, the hospital is working with ALE, operating under the brand Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, and Khipu Networks to provide a network infrastructure that offers enough capacity to support the next generation of medical equipment and services.
Conquest Hospital has completed the first stage of an ambitious network overhaul using Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise technology. In order to support over 6,000 staff across the two acute hospitals and rising demand from essential but data intensive healthcare operations, including telemetry such as CT scanners and radiology image reporting, the core network speed has been significantly been improved with a tenfold increase in bandwidth - 1Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s. The new network will handle and electronically deliver up to two million patient healthcare records.
The ongoing success of the network overhaul project has resulted in plans to repeat the project at Eastbourne District General Hospital in 2016, which is the second of two major district hospitals operated by the East Sussex Healthcare Trust, with proposals for a further extension to community hospitals.
The core network delivers superior resilience and redundancy over the outgoing legacy system, while the centralised network management provides powerful analytics tools to effectively manage traffic and further boost network performance.
By using Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6900 stackable LAN switches in the core, Conquest guarantees a consistent level of data transfer across the whole network, while the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6450 switches deliver consistent high-speed access at the network edge. The new solution is pro-actively managed from a central location by the Alcatel-Lucent OmniVista 2500 Network Management System, which delivers unique real-time insight and greater control over network status and operations, significantly helping reduce outages and bottlenecks.
Andy Bissenden, associate sirector of IT at East Sussex Healthcare Trust, said: “NHS budgetary constraints are being felt at health trusts across the UK and we have received excellent value for money from our new solution. The core network is one of the most-vital aspects of our IT modernisation programme, and we have ensured first-class quality of service by introducing consistent reliability and redundancy. I am particularly impressed with the power-saving features of our new switches, which will assist in cutting operational expenditure and the hospital's carbon footprint.”
Chris Butler, customer account manager at Khipu Networks, added: “Our delivery of a modern network tailored to the unique requirements of a healthcare environment with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise technology demonstrates the flexibility and versatility of the products we installed.
“The close working partnership we fostered with the team at Conquest Hospital was vital to delivering a solution that fulfils their needs – a reference trip to Royal Brompton Hospital allowed the team to see the benefits of a similar Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solution in action."