From a network hardware standpoint, Baptist Hospital had selected Brocade for their core network…so when the network went down, the first call went to their Brocade Regional Sales Manager. For the Hospitals IT department, time was of the essence. They were at code gray. The older network had been stretched as far as it could possibly handle especially as it was really not designed to handle all the new devices the network demanded.
Baptist Hospitals CIO was looking for a Brocade reseller who could offer the hospital expertise to figure out what took the network down, and how to get it back up. Upon contacting their Brocade Regional Sales Manager for a local resource, a Houston, TX based reseller was suggested that would be an ideal fit. That’s when Solid IT got the call.
Solid IT Networks sent Director of Technology Lance Donnelly and Sr. Networking Engineer David Stafford to the rescue. Lance and David were quickly able to identify the problem, and offer not only a solution to get the hospital network back up, but also a solution to enable the hospital to upgrade the network to handle the new demands that had been created by the new “all digital” no paper workflow created by the evolving technology available to hospital staff, doctors, and administration.
A plethora of BYOD’s (bring your own devices) had been added to the wifi network… tablets, thin clients and smart phones. The network couldn’t keep up with the demand. What Solid IT’s Engineering Staff was able to do immediatley was to get the network back up, but that was just a temporary fix and the network was down again within a matter of weeks. The next short term fix was to provide Baptist with a loaner Brocade Switch (Solid IT Demo Test Equipment) until the core network could be upgraded. The project to upgrade Baptist Hospital’s core network upgrade was completed in March, 2015.
Synopsis
What Baptist Hospital needed was a new network design, that included redundancy, so if one part of the network were to go down, a back up network is there. Critical operations are never effected…that’s the solution Solid IT delivered. In addition to designing the new core network upgrade, the sales team was able to help Baptist Hospital purchase the new equipment through a leasing company so that the network upgrade could be expedited quickly. Today, Baptist Hospitals network is running smoothly.
The Big Picture
An explosion of devices have flooded networks. Wifi networks connect to wired networks, networks that carry (in a hospital environment) critical information. In this example, Baptist Hospitals network went down. Baptist doctors and nurses lost the ability to prescribe medication over the network (amongst other critical processes) because they couldn’t access the pharmaceutical ordering software application. Never during the Baptist Hospital [code gray] situation were patients at risk, but without the ability to facilitate pharmaceutical ordering using the software systems in place, from a network standpoint the hospital was brought to its knees. Network redundancy design is one of the many services Solid IT offers. Heralded by our elite multi-certified networking engineers, Solid IT Networks can ensure that our healthcare customers are in compliance.