Networked IT at centre of Essex health trust

Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Essex has just completed installation of a new network infrastructure.

The new network capabilities will support a trust-wide Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) system and includes the new Essex Cardiothoracic Centre (CTC) at Basildon University Hospital.

Installed by specialist IP network integrator Scalable Networks, the network has been designed to meet the Trust's current and future performance and availability needs, incorporating room to grow capacity for new generation applications and imaging systems.

The new PACS system will enable the delivery of complex radiology and cardio images across the Trust at the touch of a button, improving efficiency, waiting times and overall patient care.

The Trust facilities include the new £60-million Essex CTC, which provides specialist heart and lung surgery for patients from across the UK and was officially opened by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Health Secretary Alan Johnson in October.

The CTC has been designed to be among the most modern of its kind in the country, with the latest equipment and technology throughout, including state-of-the-art operating theatres and cardiac catheter laboratories. It was the world's first medical facility to make use of LED lights in the operating theatre, reducing heat.

And the new local area network (LAN) Infrastructure has been designed to be resilient to failure, provide additional server capacity, offer new wireless mobility applications and provide additional bandwidth.

The new LAN incorporates multiple Extreme Networks Black Diamond switches, multiple Summit X450e edge switches and Summit X450a server switching, dual Wireless WM 2000 controllers and numerous Altitude Access Points.

The deployment of the new Black Diamond switches, not only provide the 10Gbps connectivity required, but also five times the switching performance of the previous core switches used - at least double the density for 1Gbps switching, increased availability due to a modular operating system (XOS) and scalability for the addition of new locations such as The Essex Cardiothoracic Centre.

The Draeger Infinity Solution, which is the first Patient Monitoring System that allows a monitor to automatically switch from wired to wireless networking while keeping all parameters, has also been implemented. As a result, hospital staff are now able to continuously monitor patients - even during transport.

Ian Beattie, head of IT at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals said: "The result [of this project] was not only a successful deployment of a very large wired and wireless network but also the full availability of a range of complex, IT dependant, medical solutions."

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