A network fit for medicine

Relocating to a new facility in Parkville, adjacent to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, is the new $250 million Royal Women’s Hospital.

Providing world-class health services to women and newborn babies, the relocation to a new facility presented the hospital with an opportunity to upgrade to a ‘medical-grade’ converged network infrastructure and Unified Communications solution.

As part of the Royal Women’s Health Partnership (RWHP) consortium, Baulderstone Hornibrook was responsible for building and Dimension Data competed in an open tender for the ICT services component of the construction.

As the specialist IT services and solutions provider to put the all-new IT infrastructure project into place at the Women’s, Dimension Data began work on the project in autumn 2007. The network roll-out came to fruition for the opening of the new hospital at the end of June 2008, with the $2.4 million project based on Cisco network and Unified Communications solutions.

Converged Cisco network

Under the contract, Dimension Data provided the Women’s with the technology, installation and operational support services for a local area network (LAN) and wireless LAN built end-to-end with Cisco equipment, as well as a Cisco IP telephony system.

As with all hospitals nowadays, a robust, ‘medical-grade’ connectivity solution, allowing high bandwidth and room for substantial growth and flexibility, was in strong demand, said Sven Brook, solution architect for the company.

“An IP telephony system for 1000 users was also required, along with the infrastructure able to handle it,” he said. “They needed a fast and very flexible network that could accommodate wireless telephony on the same infrastructure.”

Consisting of predominantly 7911G and 7941G Cisco Unified IP phone models, these interfaced with the DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) wireless system used by hospital personnel on site.

Challenges afoot

Brook said that because the telephony sits on the data network, this created a challenge in having to achieve the voice quality required within a hospital-grade system.

As a result, Brook said Dimension Data designed the data network specifically to accommodate the demands of the appropriate voice system.

He emphasised the Women’s high need for fast information which can be accessed 24/7 to cater for round-the-clock patient care.

The solution provider was able to accomplish this, said Brook, with the new DECT wireless phones that staff now carry around with them remotely, keeping them connected, regardless of their physical location on the hospital site.

He also refers to the physical cabling of the Women’s network that was implemented, whereby the company was in the position of being able to take advantage of redundant fibreoptic paths for the purposes of high availability – a critical aspect of the hospital’s requirements. “This means that data has multiple paths available on the network, thereby eliminating single points of failure and maintaining very high up-time,” said Brook.

Also implemented were Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series modular high performance core switches, and Cisco Catalyst 3750-E Series high performance edge switches.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Version 6.0 (formerly Cisco Unified CallManager 6.0), the call processing component of the Cisco Unified Communications System, integrating wired, wireless and dual mode mobile IP devices, were used to create a secure solution for the entire hospital, whenever and wherever it is required.

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