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nGenius Solution Helps Denver Health Deliver Quality Voice & Data Services
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Networks & Connectivity - WiFi
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
Denver Health, a healthcare provider for the city and county of Denver, Colorado, was experiencing substantial wireless usage growth. They run VoIP, PACs and EMR applications throughout their network. The network team needed a network and application performance management solution to detect and diagnose problems that might arise with their applications with the escalating growth. They were also implementing a critical Voice over IP (VoIP) pilot project and needed to manage performance of voice traffic alongside other critical applications such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), and streaming video during a time of unprecedented growth in network usage.
About The Customer
Denver Health is the healthcare safety net for the city and county of Denver, Colorado, delivering services to more than 25 percent of all Denver residents. Additionally, one third of the children in Denver are cared for by Denver Health physicians. A 477-bed hospital with a Level 1 trauma center anchors their services and is supplemented by eight family health centers, 12 school-based health centers, a drug and poison center, and a 24x7 nurse phone line to answer questions from the community. As all the full-time physicians at Denver Health are also University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty, this teaching hospital trains medical interns and residents in more than two dozen different specialties while simultaneously supporting a paramedic school. Denver Health’s IT organization has implemented a fiber backbone network sufficient to support the large campus environment with 18,000-ports. It presently has 20 remote sites and plans support for even more new users. There are over 300 wireless access points campus-wide, currently averaging 600 simultaneous wireless user sessions, both of which are expected to grow significantly over the next year.
The Solution
Denver Health chose the nGenius solution for a number of reasons. First, it provided detailed visibility into the VoIP traffic side-by-side with the patient treatment applications, e.g. EMR and PACS. And second, it supplied graphical, historical reports of network performance. The nGenius solution was used to manage performance of voice traffic alongside other critical applications such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), and streaming video during a time of unprecedented growth in network usage. The nGenius solution enabled the network team to view key campus segments, their QoS classes, and all the voice and data applications traversing them. The views of the applications assigned to each QoS class enabled the network team to ensure voice is being delivered in a priority manner across the network. Denver Health also leveraged the nGenius solution to enhance communication between the network and application teams during a cutover to Siemens’ Enterprise Document Management that was replacing an existing medical records system.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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