Cisco Installs Healthy Wireless Network in UK Hospital

With life and death situations occurring nearly every hour, working in a hospital can be an extremely difficult business. How about working in a hospital with out-of-date WiFi infrastructure that routinely broke down once or twice a month? That’s almost impossible.

This was the situation that was facing the United Kingdom’s Milton Keynes University Hospital (MKUH) before it turned to Cisco for help in updating their network. Not only was the constant network outages a big-time productivity hindrance, but also the lack of an adequate network was costing the hospital money and shots at the best doctors. Who wants to work in a high-stress environment where something most folks take for granted—a strong wireless network—breaks down at least twice a month?

Using Cisco Catalyst 2960-X and 6500 Series switches along with Cisco Aironet 700 and 1600 Series access points, MKUH was able to redesign and deploy an entirely new network. And with Cisco Identity Service Engine making sure that devices are safe and able to securely connect to the network, the hospital had the security that that they needed. For instance, physicians have their own rights for accessing data. This is in stark contrast to patients and visitors who are allowed to roam the web but not peruse any sensitive material.

And the best part, those days when the wireless network went down? They’re a thing of the past. Doctors and hospital staff are utilizing the new network and are connecting better than ever through voice, video, conferencing and instant messaging.

“Now we don’t get any outages and at 10Gbps, people can instantly get the data and apps they need to work efficiently,” Craig York, Associate Director of IT said. “[With a] good, stable network connection you can plug in a new Cisco access point anywhere and everything works straight away.”

For MKUH, the new network is medicine that everyone can enjoy.

To view the full case study, please click here.