Faith Regional Health Services, based in Norfolk, Nebraska, needed to replace its legacy wireless network.

THE PROBLEM

The network was old, and a replacement was due. The healthcare organization did not really use that particular vendor anywhere else any longer. Basically, it was a wireless network that had reached end of life. The access points were X number of years old, and the controllers were X number of years old.

Faith Regional needed to either upgrade that wireless network with the vendor it was on (and that vendor would have loved to keep the organization as a client), or evaluate and move to a different vendor, which is what the organization ended up doing.

IT staff were looking at replacing the wireless network, and examined a few different vendors. They ended up selecting wireless vendor Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, because, staff said, it offered a next-generation-level wireless network in terms of capabilities.

PROPOSAL

"Aruba offered a modern architecture that was self-sensing and desirable to our network team, because it could be easily managed,” said Brian Sterud, vice president and CIO at Faith Regional Health Services. 

"Further, we were interested in the network access control functionality of Aruba ClearPass. This allows us to segment our network and implement policies to isolate certain systems or portions of the network."

The vendor said the network offered maximized wireless coverage and was easy to deploy. Most of Faith Regional's clinicians use wireless handhelds, so the coverage and self-managing aspects were very important, Sterud noted.

"We've been able to add devices to our network with confidence and haven't worried about stability or performance. Our voice coverage has increased, and the number of dropped calls have decreased."

Brian Sterud, Faith Regional Health Services

"Their solution offered different types of technology that allowed for better coverage for our medical devices, better coverage for our clinicians who would be using mobile devices. That was a big part of it," he said. "Better manageability – the way we could manage the devices and how the way that works was different – that was a game-changer.

"And then that got us into some of the next steps, where we'd start to be able to use some of their network access control technologies, like ClearPass," he continued.

"ClearPass ultimately became the key. We also went to Aruba switches in our wired environment, and ClearPass could bring all that together and offer some really cool manageability of all of your assets, plus network segmentation."

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

The wireless network, ClearPass and the wired switches have created a networking ecosystem that is fully integrated and manageable, Sterud said. This has helped staff improve the security posture and given them the adaptability to manage resources within the hospital, he added.

He especially points to the ClearPass solution as a success.

"It's a secure network access control," he explained. "So what that controls is any device that enters the network. It ensures that device is authorized to be on our network and what that device is authorized to talk to in terms of other assets and components that are on our network."

One simple example Sterud uses is his laptop. There is no reason for his laptop to communicate with an IV pump that is connected wirelessly. So staff can take that traffic and make sure that his laptop and that pump never talk to one another. Then, if his laptop were to be compromised in a security incident, the damage that laptop could do is limited to certain pieces of the network, because the computer is segmented away and isolated.

"So it allows those kinds of capabilities for us to protect different portions of our network in different ways and make sure that only traffic that is considered normal production traffic is allowed," he said.

RESULTS

With the new wireless network deployed, uptime has been dramatically increased.

"We've been able to add devices to our network with confidence and haven't worried about stability or performance," Sterud explained. "Our voice coverage has increased, and the number of dropped calls have decreased.

"There is better uptime, better stability and better call quality for our clinicians' handheld devices," he continued. "That's certainly become a much more stable environment. We have happier clinicians. We were definitely having some issues prior to the conversion, dead spots. And the handhelds they use also receive alerts. On our old platform, many of those alerts were not received on time. It was creating a lot of issues. The new technology resolved those."

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

"Healthcare provider organizations should carefully consider a vendor that is an active partner," Sterud advised. "In our case, we found a partner that has been able to work together on solutions that create better outcomes for our patients."

It should be remembered that so many things now revolve around security, because of all the threats that healthcare organizations constantly face, he added.

"That has to be considered a high priority," he said. "Stability is an easy thing for people to pinpoint. It needs to be stable. It needs to be reliable. That is important. But when you think about security, and how does my network work, how can I limit damage should something bad happen, that's important."

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.