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To meet the communication needs of a highly mobile workforce, Seattle's Children's Hospital installed a Cisco Unified Wireless Network.
Business Challenge
Founded in 1907, Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center (Children's) of Seattle, Washington, serves as the pediatric referral center for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Each year, the hospital treats 76,000 children at its state-of-the-art facility, located on a 24-acre site.
U.S. News and World Report ranked Children's as one of the top children's hospitals in the nation in 2006, and for good reason: the facility is known for conducting innovative research and using the most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic medical equipment available.
Four years ago, the hospital decided to roll-out Computerized Physician Order Entry, known as CPOE, to expedite order completion and reduce medical errors.
"This posed a significant change to the way that our clinicians administered and monitored care," says Aaron Graves, senior IT technical consultant at the hospital.
But the Children's IT staff knew that a CPOE system would not be the last network requirement for its largely mobile staff of doctors and nurses. The hospital would need a solution that could meet the needs of future hospital applications-even if those requirements had yet to be determined.
"If computing was going to be a new requirement and dependency, we needed to make it as flexible and available as possible so that devices did not become the roadblock for change," Graves says.
Network Solution
To support the CPOE system, a hospital-wide wireless LAN installation was the obvious solution. "Wireless coupled with mobile devices and computers on wheels (COWs) would allow us to bring the required applications to the point of care," Graves says.
In March 2003, the hospital's IT team decided to deploy wireless (Wi-Fi) networking equipment from Cisco Systems®.
"We chose Cisco because their enterprise management system was the best," says Colin Keeney, network engineering supervisor at the hospital, adding that the hospital's strong relationship with Cisco guaranteed the ability to build on existing investments. Children's already had an installed base of Cisco networking equipment, including Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches.
The initial phase of the hospital's wireless network, rolled out throughout 2003, included some 300 Cisco Aironet® 1200 Series Access Points (APs), managed by a Cisco Wireless LAN Solution Engine (WLSE). For the next two years, hospital employees put the wireless network to good
use-not only for the physician order entry program, but for a myriad of other applications that required mobile network access from notebook PCs, handheld computers, and tablets. In late 2005, after the employee network was well-established, the hospital began a trial of wireless Internet guest access for patients and their families. The service, dubbed "Children's Family Internet Connection," was tested in a few areas in the beginning of 2006 and officially rolled out
in November.
use-not only for the physician order entry program, but for a myriad of other applications that required mobile network access from notebook PCs, handheld computers, and tablets. In late 2005, after the employee network was well-established, the hospital began a trial of wireless Internet guest access for patients and their families. The service, dubbed "Children's Family Internet Connection," was tested in a few areas in the beginning of 2006 and officially rolled out
in November.
In August 2006, the hospital began to explore the idea of real-time tracking its high-value equipment with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. To help ensure accurate location tracking, the IT staff decided to add centralized control capabilities to the hospital's WLAN. This was a change from the facility's existing wireless LAN, in which each access point was largely autonomous. In the initial deployment only management traffic traversed between the WLSE and the access points. With a unified wireless network, all traffic, data, control, and management could traverse between the controller and the APs.
Although the WLSE was able to detect the general location of a device by identifying the closest access point, "We could not get the real location-based tracking with the WLSE that we can get with the conversion to lightweight access points," says Keeney. "The lightweight access points can get down to within three feet of where a device is."
Furthermore, with a unified wireless network, network administrators could control the vast network from a single location.
To create the unified WLAN, in August 2006, the hospital purchased Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Wireless LAN Services Modules (WiSMs) for each of its two existing Catalyst 6500 Ethernet switches. Although a single WiSM can provide full network coverage, deploying two helps ensure network uptime; if there were ever a problem with one WiSM, the other would automatically take over.
The hospital's Aironet access points were converted to support the Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP) via a free firmware upgrade that enabled them to be centrally controlled. This meant that the hospital could improve its network while still taking advantage of existing investment in APs.
With access points that support LWAPP, the network is primed to offer precise tracking capabilities. In 2007, the hospital plans to trial RFID tracking of some of its medical equipment, using active Wi-Fi tags; syringe pumps, mobile monitors and other pieces of medical equipment will be among the initial tracked items.
To that end, the hospital also purchased a Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS) in conjunction with a Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance. The WCS provides RF prediction, policy provision, network optimization, troubleshooting, security monitoring, and wireless LAN systems management-all with a robust graphical interface. The Wireless Location Appliance works together with the WCS, using the lightweight access points to track the physical location of wireless devices-such as Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, computers on wheels, and anything equipped with a Wi-Fi tracking tag-to within a few feet.
Business Results
For the hospital, the most obvious benefit of the wireless network is the ability for healthcare providers to perform their critical tasks without leaving a patient's side.
"For us the return on investment was heavily based on providing computing at point of care," Graves says. "For example, there is a lot of movement going on in the intensive care and surgery workflows, and stationary devices just did not meet clinician needs."
There are several ways that mobility has helped the hospital's employees stay in better touch with the network-and with the patients. "It might be using a laptop on a mobile anesthesia cart, which lets the doctor stay at the patient's airway and access patient information, or it might be
a PDA delivered quality survey given to patients and their families at bedside upon discharge,"
he says.
a PDA delivered quality survey given to patients and their families at bedside upon discharge,"
he says.
Furthermore, the hospital garners both cost savings and time savings every time it faces a challenging new network requirement.
"For instance, a new application required us to add a networked PC to an older, sound-proof audiology testing booth," Graves says. "But that booth had no Ethernet wiring, and we would void the booth's warranty if we poked a hole in it. These situations are when you see the big wins with wireless-in that case, the right antenna and a wireless laptop solved the problem. This is a hospital that focuses heavily on continuous process improvement and service quality excellence for its patients and families, and wireless has become a very convenient way to make sure that the network meets the needs of new applications.
NEXT STEPS
As the hospital expands, its WLAN is expected to increase to some 500 access points in the next few years. A unified wireless network will help ensure that new APs can be easily configured and managed from a central location.
As for the upcoming active RFID rollout, the hospital expects to see a significant productivity boost and cost savings simply by reducing the time that it takes to find misplaced equipment.
The benefits will be immediate, says Joe Dagonese, the Cisco account manager in charge of the hospital's deployment. "Considering the amount of time that it takes to find an infusion pump or a wheelchair, real-time location-based services are where the return on investment can really increase."
"Eventually we will start looking at things like patient tracking, refrigeration monitoring, and workflow logging." Graves says. "We are now starting to define the clinical workflows where active RFID would make sense, and where its current state of development can meet the requirements."
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To find out more about the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/unifiedwireless
To learn more about Cisco healthcare solutions, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/healthcare
To learn more about Cisco switching solutions, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/switching
To learn more about Cisco wireless solutions, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/wireless