Implementing A Wireless Network For An Urban Hospital
Identification of all the critical elements and technologies to achieve stated goals
You are an IT Director at a large urban hospital with 500 beds and 4,500 associates. You are a full-service hospital with a typical list of departments to include multiple ICUs, mother & baby, emergency services, radiology, oncology, surgery, etc. You are piloting programs to allow personal mobile devices on the network under pressure from physicians and nurses to either provide the devices or allow personal ones under “bring your own device” (BYOD) solution. In order to protect applications and patient data, you decided to build a dedicated “public” wireless network for all outside devices that are not approved as standard workstations for normal hospital use and circulation. Your network will be publicly accessible and ask users to sign in and electronically sign a user acceptance agreement. Then users will be on a “public” network that can access the Internet and “outside” applications, but will not be allowed on the internal “private” network.
You are expected to:
1. Identify all critical elements and technologies necessary to achieve stated goals of your project.
2. Describe the resources you will require to achieve your project goals .
3. Architect, at a high level, your proposed solution and draw a diagram in a software application of your choice, typically Power Point or Visio.
4. List and describe clinical applications and/or services that will run on your proposed infrastructure. In the case of EMR, describe which services will be in the cloud and whether there are any services that will need to be hosted internally and why or why not.
5. Identify benefits and risks to business operations and patient care environment, resulting from your proposed solution.
6. Briefly describe to senior management why your solution is a good fit and how you will address the risks identified above.
Wireless network is becoming more popular in the changing industrial environments. Several business industries are leaning towards the implementation of Wireless network technology in their business farms (Basu, 2014). Urban hospitals need a good network structure and sometimes for the complex network structure, they need to implement the wireless network technology.
This documentation addresses several aspects of implementing the wireless network in urban hospital’s existing network structure. Aspects such as critical elements and technologies required, resources required, clinical application and services provided, benefits and risks involved and justification of proposed wireless network system have been highlighted. In addition, a wireless network has been designed for the urban hospital management system which have public and private networks distinction in between them.
To design a wireless network system over the existing network structure is not an easy task. The very first stage of implementing the wireless network structure in the hospital’s existing network structure is to identify the crucial elements and the technologies that are required. This section represents the technologies required for the successful implementation of the wireless network structure in the hospital’s existing network structure.
Enterprising Wi-Fi access and Hotspot Guest access: the hospital management was using a simple LAN based network structure. Now the management wants to implement wireless network technology into their networking structure (Boccardi, 2014). The first and foremost criteria of implementing the wireless network technology is setting up the Wi-Fi in different positions into the existing network structure and also allow the Hotspot guest access.
Description of Resources that required for designing the Wireless network at Urban Hospital
Designing multi-service mesh networks: Implementation of wireless network is more complex than the existing LAN network structure. To implement the wireless network technology management, have to consider redesigning their networks and it is recommended that the hospital management should use the multi-service mesh network for the implementation of wireless network (Cowley, 2012).
Point to multi-point wireless: wireless network technology allows multicasting the network rather than broadcasting the network data packets. So redesigning of the network structure to implement the point to multi-point wireless technology is necessary.
There are several hardware resources, which are required for the successful implementation of the wireless network at urban hospital. The resources that are required for the implementation of Wireless network are described below.
Wireless NIC: To successfully implement the wireless network into the hospital’s existing network structure NIC (Network Information Card) card is required (Kish, 2013). It is important to have NIC installed in each of the system to directly communicate with the wireless router.
Wireless router: Wireless routers are the heart of wireless Networking structure. The wireless router serves as the central hub of multicasting the network data packets to several points. The wireless hubs are now-a-days served as wireless routers. Hubs are actually gateways, not routers but they do serve the purpose. to implement the wireless networking structure in the hospital’s existing network it installation of wireless hubs or routers are important.
Strong internet connection: Last but not the least it is necessary to have a good internet connection while thinking about implementing the wireless network in the hospital’s existing network structure.
Figure 1: Wireless Network of Urban hospital
(Source: Created by author)
With the implementation of wireless network, the company is thinking to bring changes in the hospital’s operational functionalities. The new systems that will be implemented with the implementation of wireless network technology are described below.
Computerized Physician Order Entry: With the help of CPOE (computerized Physician Order Entry) system, the practitioners will be able to enter orders electronically rather than handwritten or by verbal instructions.
Electronic Prescribing: With the successful implementation of wireless network system in the hospital’s existing network structure the management will also implement electronic prescribing which allows doctors check patient’s record and helps in suggesting the medicine based on the patient’s previous prescription and health condition (Liang, 2015).
Electronic Health Records: electronic Health Records (EHRs) provide electronic documents about the patient’s interaction with the doctors. EHRs system can be integrated with the hospital’s departmental clinic system with the successful implementation of Wireless Network in the hospital’s existing network.
The hospital management wants to implement the wireless network technology into their existing network. The benefits and risks are described below.
Increased Efficiency: With the installation of wireless network technology improved data communication and faster transfer of information within the organization can be achieved. Management can remotely check the system.
Better Coverage: As there is no need for the cables and adapters user can use the facility of the hospital network while on the go. A better coverage can also be achieved with the successful implementation of Wireless Technology in the hospital’s existing network structure.
Design of Wireless network for Urban Hospital
Neat and Easy Installation: since there is no cable and adapters running here and there so the setup of Wireless network technology is neat and clean (Othman, 212).
Lower bandwidth speed: It is not possible to get as much speed as users normally get with Ethernet cables. Although the situation is currently changing and current UTP cables can reach up to 1Gbps of speed still comparatively lower speed than Ethernet cables (Marsch, 2013).
Security Issues: Wireless networks are the weakest in terms of security and privacy protection. While implementing Wireless technology into the hospital’s existing network infrastructure management should aware about developing new security policies for wireless network.
Installation problems: Sometimes installation of Wireless network can cause some problems like interference if nearby other buildings also use wireless network. While implementing the wireless technology hospital management should keep these things in mind.
Wireless technology in Internet world is becoming more popular. This section of the documentation gives proper justification about why the management should implement wireless technology over the existing network infrastructure present in the hospital. As being an Urban hospital there are number of departments present in the hospitals like emergency services, radiology, oncology, surgery and many more. It is important to maintain the communication between the departments as well as it is also important for the management to check with every department remotely form their main office. So it is suitable to have a wireless technology which will again have a public and private connection (Shazali, 2013). The hospitals stuff will use the private connection and will have access to the clinical applications that run on network but the visitors and outsiders like patients can also will be able to sign in to the network with their device and can use the facility of the internet but cannot access the medical stuffs. After exploring all the aspects, it is recommended that hospital management should implement Wireless technology into their existing network structure for the better networking infrastructure and improved efficiency in the network.
This report explores the several sides of Wireless network implementation into an urban hospital’s exiting network structure. This section of the report concludes that it is highly recommended to implement Wireless Technology into the hospital’s existing business structure. An urban hospital where there are several departments and each department have number of employees working for that department, it is highly necessary to have remote communication between the departments. So it is suitable to have a wireless technology which has a wireless implementation and public and private division within the network. In addition, with the implementation of Wireless technology the management can also remotely check the departments needs and can keep an eye on every department to overall build a better hospital management system.
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