News
Nottingham University Hospitals to deploy Cisco medical-grade
network
11 April 2008
The Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has signed a
multi-million-pound agreement to use Cisco technology to provide a
state-of-the-art network infrastructure across the
The new network is expected to help reduce costs, improve access to
healthcare information, and provide patients with services faster and
more efficiently. The choice was made following a significant period of
research by the Trust’s IT team, which included a visit to St Olav’s
University Hospital in Trondheim, Norway, widely regarded as a flagship
'connected hospital' in Europe.
The project is expected to start this month and to be completed by
March 2010 and will be implemented and supported by NextiraOne UK, a
Cisco Gold Certified Partner.
The Cisco Medical-Grade Network will include many of Cisco’s
portfolio of products, including foundational networking technologies
delivering highly secure, high-performance fixed and wireless
networking, centralised Wi-Fi, Unified Communications software,
collaboration tools, network security products, and location-based
services. The solution will support a broad range of applications to
help improve the delivery of healthcare services.
A wireless network will provide real-time access to information at
the bedside and help ensure that clinicians can be contacted anywhere on
campus. RFID (radio frequency identification) systems will be installed
to monitor and locate expensive equipment.
Ian Smith, Head of Service Design and Innovation for Nottingham
University Hospitals NHS Trust, said, “The Cisco Medical-Grade Network
will help the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust transform the
way we deliver healthcare by enabling us to readily and cost-effectively
exploit the capability of new technologies that can genuinely help
improve patient care, such as helping to reduce overall patient waiting
times and reducing the need for patients to duplicate information by
providing access to all relevant information at the point of care.
“What we are planning is an infrastructure platform where clinicians
can access, share and collaborate on healthcare information faster and
in a more efficient way. The Cisco technology will help the Trust
capture cost efficiencies, help increase the coordination and
integration of care across organisational boundaries, enable greater
collaboration of clinical teams to deliver more efficient and effective
care, and reconfigure service delivery towards more out-patient, day
patient and community care.”
Andrew Fearn, Director of Health Informatics at the Trust, added,
“This announcement marks an important step towards our declared aim of
being the best teaching acute trust by 2016. We envisage that the new
network will offer huge benefits to the ‘releasing time to care’
program, enabling our clinical staff to spend more time caring for our
patients and ensuring that the most current information is always
available at the point of care.”
“The Cisco Medical-Grade Network connects all stakeholders in the
healthcare system to one information and communications infrastructure
as a connected healthcare ecosystem and provides the foundation for
advanced healthcare solutions,” said Terry Espiner, Regional Sales
Manager for Cisco.
“The Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust is set to become one
of the UK’s showcase examples of how healthcare providers can use
networking technologies to transform the delivery of healthcare
services.”
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