Speak to any hospital CIO and they’ll all tell you that WiFi is vital to the success of their hospitals. The truth these days is that the hospital environment has evolved and is continuing to do so at a rapid pace. Today’s hospitals need exceptional WLAN with the proper performance required for diverse biomedical devices and urgent communications.
It’s critical that hospital wireless networks support a large area of proper connectivity with roaming being a high priority. Hospital IT leaders are faced with this difficult task of delivering an exceptional WLAN experience while managing all of the security and regulatory concerns that come with a BYOD environment.
It’s not a secret anymore; having a proper WLAN brings with it a huge return on investment in the ways of reduced costs, increased efficiency and staff productivity. There are other benefits too such as improved patient care, and an overall better experience for everyone involved.
Outlined below are 5 provenreasons hospitals need a wireless site survey to increase their WiFi performance.
Design
Poor WLAN designs make it increasingly difficult for hospitals to meet the demand of the new hospital environment. Designs should be scalable to support the growing numbers of new wireless medical and mobile devices. It’s important to plan for the environment today with the ability to grow tomorrow. To learn more, check out our latest blog, What Should Be Included in a WiFi Design.
Knowing Your Environment
Hospitals encounter many unique challenges in addition to the design itself, none more frustrating than the environment that the WLAN must live in. There are many different types of building materials such as concrete, brick, etc. that interfere with (RF) signals, not to mention all of the moving parts of a hospital which are covered in metal. It’s a fluid and dynamic environment especially at the 2.4GHz level that is most commonly used.
The best answer to this is making sure you have a proper hospital wireless site survey done prior to building your WLAN. A good wireless site survey will give you the visibility and understanding of what you are up against towards creating an exceptional WLAN for your hospital.
Preparing for WiFi Diversity
One of the most frustrating problems that hospital CIO’s can face are issues with the vast amount of different devices on their networks. It’s important that every device, from tablets and smartphones to the slew of medical devices are all able to connect to the wireless
network. Again, having a proper wireless site survey will enable you to plan for not only the number of devices but also the different device types.
Coverage
To maximize efficiency and productivity the hospital network must be able to seamlessly allow users to go (roam) anywhere on the
network while never experiencing any drops in performance. This means using the right kinds of AP’s (access points) as well as positioning those AP’s in the right places.
Security
Hospitals are a particularly tricky environment when it comes to security. Due to HIPAA regulations, CIO’s are constantly trying to make sure that the wireless network is doing its job of protecting sensitive patient data.
One solution to help answer security demands is mobile device management or MDM. MDM is cost-effective and provides real-time data security enforcement for large and diverse communities including patients and healthcare employees. If you're interesting in learning more about security, check out our latest blog about hospital WiFi Security and HIPPA compliance.
The Big Picture
With BYOD continuing to increase and affect wireless networks, it is critical to have an enterprise grade WLAN with the highest-performance possible and this all starts with proper planning and a wireless site survey.
SecurEdge has been specializing in creating large scale wireless networks with the highest level of performance and security for over 8 years. If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to chat! Simply contact us here.
