The University Hospital of the West Indies
Overview
The University Hospital of the West Indies is an internationally recognized medical facility with 579 beds which continues to facilitate the clinical training of health care professionals. This type A regional referral hospital has over time expanded its services to meet the health needs of the region. Cutting-edge technology is used in the provision of services thus ensuring excellence in teaching, research, and patient care.
Problem
The UHWI was embarking on a major modernization project to improve patient care through the implementation of the Health Information Management Systems (HIMS). The project involved the digitization of the hospital’s operations and the eventual migration away from paper records. This involved utilizing HIMS for the entire health management cycle such as appointments, prescriptions, and electronic medical records.
In order to facilitate digitisation, the hospital needed to modernize and standardise the existing network. The network contained unsuitable, disparate technologies. They experienced frequent outages and was difficult to manage.
Solution
- At the network layer, Salus planned, designed, and implemented a hybrid network consisting of Cisco, Cisco Meraki, and Fortinet equipment. We also implemented a server cluster architecture and network-attached storage to facilitate storage and archiving of patient imaging and surveillance data.
- The hospital now boasts a solid local area network with 802.11AC Wi-Fi network supporting wireless medical carts, patient monitors, digital displays, and guest access. The system is also designed to support a planned baby monitoring system to prevent child theft.
Salus also implemented cloud storage and managed desktop solutions
Benefits
- Improved network scalability
- Network resilience – Multiple dynamic network paths
- 99% network uptime
- Ease of management – single pane of glass across the entire network
