Solutions Guide | Healthcare
Secure, Intelligent Infrastructure for Healthcare
Solutions | Healthcare
Executive Summary
At Allied Telesis, we know that healthcare providers must:
▶ Provide safe, affordable, and accessible care
▶ Provide faster and more thorough diagnosis and treatment
▶ Improve and enhance the patient experience
▶ Harness network technology to improve collaboration and
decision making processes used by caregivers and experts
▶ Provide services that are both cost-effective and of the
highest quality
▶ Maintain easy and fast access to information
▶ Improve caregiver efficiency by facilitating streamlined
workflow
▶ Decrease medical errors
▶ Provide comfort, distraction and entertainment to minimize
patient distress.
The Allied Telesis healthcare solution provides:
▶▶ Resiliency
Minimize the risk of downtime by using a number of different
capabilities to provide total network redundancy
▶▶ Security
Protect your network from external or internal attack,
adhere to strict privacy laws and provide total patient
confidentiality
▶▶ High▶performance
Harness network technology to enhance the speed and
accuracy of all your information sharing, collaboration and
decision making processes.
▶▶ Future-proofing
Easily expand your network as your business grows
▶▶ Value-added▶services
Offer distractions and entertainment to improve the patient
experience. Provide your patients with bedside Interactive
TVs — email, web, satellite TV and movies, audio, surveys,
patient information and third-party services.
Healthcare needs and objectives
Healthcare has come a long way in the last century. Medical
science and patient treatment are advancing at an astonishing
rate, and professional healthcare providers have to keep up in an
environment that is growing more complex every day.
As a healthcare provider, you must supply the best possible
patient care at the best possible price, harness evolving
technologies, maintain an extremely high level of network
security to protect confidential patient information, and sustain
increasing numbers of patients and staff. Resiliency is key to avoid
potentially life-threatening network downtime. High performance
is essential for both your Picture Archiving and Communications
System (PACS) image-management system, and for the digitizing
and storing of all patient files and records as Electronic Medical
Records (EMR). Then there are the usual business objectives —
maintaining and improving organizational efficiency, increasing
profitability, and meeting regulatory requirements.
Finding a network that meets all your needs can seem like an
impossible task — but with an Allied Telesis solution that is
tailored for your organization, it is both achievable and simple.
Why Allied Telesis?
Allied Telesis is an industry leader in networking solutions. With
our proven history of delivering highly reliable and featurerich advanced network solutions, more and more healthcare
institutions are turning to Allied Telesis to achieve their objectives.
At Allied Telesis, we are committed to providing the resiliency,
security, and high performance you need for your healthcare
network, both now and well into the future. Our products
meet your requirements for a robust and scalable solution,
whilst still working within your budget. Our healthcare solution
provides you with resiliency, high-availability, security, productivity,
interoperability, flexibility, plus many value-added services.
Read on to learn how Allied Telesis can provide enhanced
operations for your healthcare organization.
2 Allied Telesis Healthcare Solutions
Achieve optimal resiliency and
eliminate network downtime
In today’s busy healthcare environment, patient diagnosis and
treatment can be extremely time-critical. Network downtime is
not just an annoyance — it can be a life-threatening event.
Your healthcare business needs a resilient network, which offers
optimal resiliency to minimize the risk of dangerous and costly
downtime. Today’s healthcare network must support any number
of recent and emerging technologies, such as IP telephony
for voice communication, and content networking for video
distribution, as well as electronic patient records that combine
medical data, handwritten notes, verbal records, and images. Any
failure in your network can result in your entire network being
impaired, which can in turn impede the delivery of potentially lifecritical applications and data.
Allied Telesis healthcare solutions utilize a number of different
sophisticated high-availability features. Our products work
together to provide a robust and reliable network with maximum
resiliency, ensuring traffic flow continues even during outages.
The result is a resilient network, from the core to the edge — to
easily deliver your video and medical imaging files as well as video,
VoIP, and traditional IP traffic. This not only ensures minimum user
downtime, but also allows your staff to work in collaboration to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your patient care.
“The major reason for selecting Allied Telesis for the
network upgrade was their proven experience in the
market. The SwitchBlade® met all of the requirements
for the core of the new LAN, such as the ability to
forward high capacity graphical content, high reliability
and a comprehensive feature set.”
Mr. Horiguchi, System Sales Manager,
San Esu Management Systems (SEMS),
Kushiro City Medical Hospital
Resiliency Benefits
■ Seamless traffic flow
■ High performance at the core of your network
■ Higher bandwidth, and optimum use of available
bandwidth
■ Optimal network speed
■ Ensure continued delivery of essential services
■ Reduced risk of network outage
■ Continued service even in the event of a power supply
failure
Allied Telesis Advanced Resiliency Features
▶■ Virtual▶Chassis▶Stacking▶(VCStack™)
VCStack provides uninterrupted network service,
and delivers chassis-like resiliency and redundancy
features without the high price tag. Combined with
Link Aggregation, VCStack provides a superior network core
solution.
▶■ Link▶Aggregation
Link Aggregation provides resiliency with higher performance,
since it utilizes your full network bandwidth. Failover is immediate,
as the switch (or Virtual Chassis) almost instantly adapts its
forwarding process in the event of the loss of a link.
▶■ Ethernet▶Protection▶Switching▶Ring▶(EPSRing™)
EPSR allows Allied Telesis products to form a
protected ring of switches with as little as 50ms
failover. A multiple-ring EPSR network can provide
extremely high performance throughout your network.
▶■ Built-in▶power▶redundancy
Built-in power redundancy guarantees the continued delivery of
essential services. Many of our key products reduce the risk of
network outage by allowing for two PSUs to be installed, when
only one is required to power the device.
▶■ Hot▶swappable▶Power▶Supply▶Units▶(PSUs)
PSUs can be easily removed and replaced with no interruption
to the network. Using two separate power sources (feed
redundancy) provides even more power redundancy to the
network.
www.alliedtelesis.com 3
"Patients used to have to wait for their accounts, due to unavailability of the accounting system caused by system
troubles and/or poor bandwidth. I haven't heard any complaints since the new LAN was introduced."
Mr. Matsumoto, a general manager of Kushiro-City Medical Hospital
Security – for your network and your patients
Security is a dual issue for healthcare businesses. Not only do
you need to protect your network from external or internal
attack, you must also adhere to strict privacy laws and provide
total patient confidentiality. A great deal of confidential personal
information is stored in the healthcare system — not just details
of the patient’s health, but also such details as name, address,
phone numbers, banking and credit card information, even Social
Security numbers. As well as the increasing risk of attack from the
Internet, you must protect your sensitive information from insider
interference. Also, you must adhere to the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security and privacy
rules. Any data breach can have detrimental effects on both
patients and your reputation, so healthcare businesses must really
step up efforts to protect electronic patient information.
Allied Telesis healthcare networks support a number of cutting
edge, top-class security features, protecting your network
and enhancing patient safety with protection of patient data.
Advanced security features protect your patients’ confidentiality,
and your network — from the edge to the core. Our healthcare
solution provides total network security with Network Access
Control (NAC), mitigating threats to your network infrastructure,
and Private Virtual LANs (VLANs) providing secure access to
entertainment and services for patients.
Security Benefits
■ Protect your network from external attack
■ Provide total patient confidentiality.
■ Maintain unprecedented control over user access to your
network.
■ Connect all of the different groups within your premises,
such as medical examination, office work, and patients, yet
separate their access to different resources.
■ Increase your overall reliability and performance, and make
the network easier to maintain.
Allied Telesis Advanced Security Features
▶■ Network▶Access▶Control▶(NAC)
NAC allows you unprecedented control over user
access to your network. Allied Telesis NAC uses industry
standard features to provide this security optimally at the
interface between the user and the network, assigning
network access based on identity, access method, location
and end-point security status.
▶■ Private▶VLANs
Multiple users sharing the same VLAN can enjoy access
to appropriate network resources, while communication
between user ports is blocked. This provides a suitable
means to securely offer your patients entertainment and
network services.
▶■ Advanced▶Traffic▶Management
Powerful traffic filtering capabilities can be implemented
to prevent malicious LAN-based attacks.
Alongside port learning limits and
hardware based denial-of-service
defense, this provides a continually
secure network environment.
4 Allied Telesis Healthcare Solutions
High performance – for network speed
and storage
Healthcare businesses have some unique and challenging
network performance requirements. Healthcare providers
are working towards digitizing and storing all patient files and
records — including X-rays and diagnostic images from the
PACS image-management system, admission information, and
transcribed data — as EMRs. EMRs are much easier for medical
personnel to manipulate and to share among colleagues, thereby
increasing business efficiency and medical accuracy. However, this
digitization accelerates the (already extreme) growth of necessary
storage capacity, especially when you take into account the very
high resolution levels of clinical images — just one CT exam can
use up to 1Gb of storage space.
Timely decision making is critical in providing quality healthcare
services, therefore your network must facilitate the effective and
efficient transfer of large and complex files, including the ability
to handle significant surges in data transfer. High bandwidth is
required to send large files, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(MRI), ultra sound, digital radiology imaging, and Computed
Tomography (CT) scans, with no delay or image degradation. The
fast transfer of quality images quickens the diagnostic process,
which can be a matter of life and death to a patient, as early
detection and treatment can save lives. For example, a doctor
treating a patient in an emergency room must be able to rapidly
access that patient’s medical records and history, in order to
diagnose and treat the patient.
High Performance Benefits
■ Increase the quality and safety of your patent care, with
fast and accurate diagnosis and treatment.
■ Optimize rapid and reliable access to complex files such as
radiology images.
■ Enhance the patient experience by giving medical staff
access to information anywhere, any time — resulting in
shorter wait times and more efficient processes.
■ Enable greater staff collaboration to better utilize your
staff ’s combined experience.
■ Improve your organizational efficiency by facilitating
efficient workflow.
■ Save time by giving your staff the ability to communicate in
real-time.
■ Reduce the need for manual, paper-based systems,
resulting in an increase of staff efficiency and productivity,
and therefore an improved quality of patient care.
■ Enjoy super-fast recovery, ensuring high-quality content
delivery.
Allied Telesis Advanced High Performance
Features
▶■ Superior▶Quality▶of▶Service
Prioritize real-time data and manage bandwidth allocation
to specific applications, with superior QoS features
ensuring wire-speed delivery of all your critical IPv4 and
IPv6 traffic.
▶■ 10▶Gigabit▶Ethernet
Products that support the leading Ethernet standard of 10
gigabits per second ensure maximum data throughput to
support multiple simultaneous network applications.
An Allied Telesis solution lets you harness network technology to
enhance the speed and accuracy of all your information sharing,
collaboration and decision making processes. A healthcare
environment necessitates the ability to prioritize real-time traffic,
like voice and video, and manage network bandwidth allocation.
Our advanced products ensure your network resources and
applications are always available, with superior high performance
features. Products that support 10 Gigabit Ethernet (currently the
fastest standard available) ensure maximum data throughput for
the core of your network, allowing it to cope with large amounts
of stored data, and easily handle any large surges or times of peak
demand.
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▶■ Ethernet▶Protection▶Switching▶Ring▶(EPSRing™)
With the ability to form a ring at up to 10
Gigabits per second, EPSRing can provide
extremely high performance at the core of
your network, with as little as 50 milliseconds (ms) failover,
providing virtually uninterrupted access to resources
and applications. EPSRing far outperforms traditional
STP-based networks where failover and network reconvergence is in the order of many seconds.
▶■ Virtual▶Chassis▶Stacking▶(VCStack™)
VCStack provides uninterrupted network
service, and maximizes the use of available
network bandwidth to ensure access to
information when you need it.
“Allied Telesis offers the experience, knowledge and technology that we were looking for. Its solutions are
able to seamlessly integrate our new and existing network. This resulted in giving HSC the best Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO). I’m happy that Allied Telesis met all the stringent requirements within the hospital’s budget.”
Future-proofing – to expand your network
as your business grows
Your healthcare network will need to grow and adapt in order to
keep up with advances in medical science and patient treatment,
as well as to allow you to sustain increasing numbers of patients
and staff.
Allied Telesis products optimize your technology investments by
fully integrating with existing systems and applications. And, as
your business grows in size and scope, our products help you to
build a more efficient and progressive healthcare network, since
they are designed to fulfill all your network needs both now, and
well into the future.
The inherent modularity of our latest, cutting-edge products
ensures your network can grow alongside your business. To
future proof your network, we provide stacking using VCStack™,
and ultimate flexibility and scalability with the use of expansion
modules (XEMs) in a variety of different capabilities to suit your
needs. VCStack negates the need to purchase expensive chassisbased solutions that are likely be under-utilized in the short to
medium term.
.
Dr. Soo Chee Siong, Medical Director, HSC Medical Center
Allied Telesis Advanced Future-Proofing
Features
▶■ VCStack™
Add more devices to a VCStack to increase
port density and resiliency without increasing
management complexity. You can add or
remove individual stacked units as bandwidth and feature
requirements in your network evolve. A highly resilient
VCStack solution prevents traffic bottlenecks by utilizing
the stack’s full bandwidth, and removing network failure
points.
▶■ Expandability
Allied Telesis premium switches are flexible, with a
number of expansion modules (XEMs) you can add as
your network grows. Our high speed XEMs provide both
copper and fiber expansion options right up to 10 Gigabit
Ethernet, delivering the ultimate in flexibility.
▶■ Standards-Based
Allied Telesis’ leading modular software, AlliedWare Plus,™
is standards-based, so you can be assured of a solution
that will fully integrate with your systems and maximize
your investment well into the future. Adhering to industry
standards guarantees interoperability with the existing and
Future-proofing benefits
■ Enjoy a low initial cost of ownership
■ Utilize our simple and cost-effective upgrades as your
network needs evolve. Grow your network with your
business, without incurring major costs
■ Add port density and performance to your network as and
where required.
■ Optimize your technology investments with products that
fully integrate with other systems and applications.
■ Enjoy a scalable and versatile solution – our modular
architecture allows configuration possibilities limited only
by the imagination.
6 Allied Telesis Healthcare Solutions
future network equipment that is part of your healthcare
solution.
▶■ IPv6
Hardware support for the next generation Internet
Protocol (IPv6) allows your network to take advantage of
our superior inbuilt security and traffic control features,
and be at the forefront of the global move to greater
Internet addressing and communication abilities. The ability
to simultaneously manage IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, and even
tunnel IPv6 traffic across an IPv4 network and the Internet
ensures an easy transition to next generation networking
with Allied Telesis products.
Value-added services
Time in the hospital can be traumatic and painful, and at times it
can also be just plain boring. There is a growing expectation that
healthcare providers will provide not only top quality medical
care, but also distractions and entertainment to minimize
patient distress and relieve boredom. Allied Telesis products are
designed to provide not just top quality network functionality to
run your business smoothly, but also to provide numerous valueadded services to further enhance your business.
With Allied Telesis products, you can offer your patients state-ofthe-art entertainment, right at their bedside — with interactive
TVs providing email, web, satellite TV and movies, audio, and
surveys, as well as patient information and third-party services.
Benefits of value-added services
■ Offer distractions and entertainment to minimize patient
distress.
■ Enhance the patient experience, and ensure maximum
customer satisfaction
■ Gain the edge on your competitors with state-of-the-art
entertainment capabilities
■ Maximize your productivity by keeping patients occupied.
Allied Telesis Value-Added Features
▶■ Triple▶Play
Our products form an end-to-end solution for managing
the convergence of voice, video and data on today’s
networks.
▶■ Superior▶Quality▶of▶Service
Prioritize real-time services, like streaming video and voice,
and manage bandwidth allocation to specific applications.
▶■ Multicasting
Manage streaming video and intelligently control its
proliferation through your network with advanced
multicast features.
▶■ Ethernet▶Protection▶Switching▶Ring▶(EPSRing™)
EPSRing is the Allied Telesis flagship solution
for providing extremely fast failover between
nodes in a resilient ring
of switches. EPSRing enables rings
to recover in no more than 50 ms,
preventing a node or link failure from
affecting the customer experience, even
with demanding applications such as IP
telephony and streaming video.
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About Allied Telesis, Inc.
Allied Telesis is a world class leader in delivering IP/Ethernet
network solutions to the global marketplace. We create innovative,
standards-based IP networks that seamlessly connect you with
voice, video and data services.
Enterprise customers can build complete end-to-end networking
solutions through a single vendor, with core to edge technologies
ranging from powerful 10 Gigabit Layer 3 switches to media
converters.
Allied Telesis also offers a wide range of access, aggregation and
backbone solutions for Service Providers. Our products range
from industry leading media gateways which allow voice, video
and data services to be delivered to the home and business, to
high-end chassis-based platforms providing significant network
infrastructure.
Allied Telesis flexible service and support programs are tailored
to meet a wide range of needs, and are designed to protect your
Allied Telesis investment well into the future.
Visit us online at www.alliedtelesis.com.
Americas Headquarters | 19800 North Creek Parkway | Suite 100 | Bothell | WA 98011 | USA | T: +1 800 424 4284 | F: +1 425 481 3895
European Headquarters | Via Motta 24 | 6830 Chiasso | Switzerland | T: +41 91 69769.00 | F: +41 91 69769.11
Asia-Pacific Headquarters | 11 Tai Seng Link | Singapore | 534182 | T: +65 6383 3832 | F: +65 6383 3830
www.alliedtelesis.com
© 2010 Allied Telesis Inc. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
All company names, logos, and product designs that are trademarks or registered trademar ks are the property of their respective owners.
USA C618-31007-00 RevB
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