Virginia Hospital Center has selected and deployed
InnerWireless’ Horizon Converged Wireless solution across 1.1 million square feet in three buildings on its Arlington, Virginia, campus to ensure wireless connectivity for mission- and life-critical applications.
Horizon, also known as a distributed antenna system, delivers virtually every wireless service including 3G smartphones, Wi-Fi, medical telemetry, fire/life/safety, pagers and two-way radios.
“We realized that we would need much more capacity and higher reliability than with previous wireless technologies, and that InnerWireless had already provided the key technology to other hospitals with similar demands,” said David Crutchfield, vice president and CIO of Virginia Hospital Center, in a statement.
Crutchfield said that he spoke with a number of CIOs who had implemented InnerWireless and they all spoke highly of the results they achieved.
Virginia Hospital Center clinicians drove the need to install advanced wireless technology, requiring guaranteed connectivity for the many types of wireless devices used in providing quality and efficient care to its patients.
Crutchfield said that when it comes to healthcare’s life-critical applications, high reliability, high availability and eliminating coverage gaps were at the top of the list of requirements for a wireless platform.
“Our physicians and clinical staff had a very strong voice from the very beginning of this project demanding ‘five 9s’ availability for the combination of the wired and wireless networks”, he said.
He said that in addition to the daily clinical support functions of the wireless technology, InnerWireless will be as a key component of the ‘five 9s’ solution, providing for network connectivity during wired network outages.
“We wanted a strategic partner that would be accountable, highly competent and accessible. During the customer reference part of our evaluation process we developed a real comfort level that InnerWireless was the type of company we would like to do business with and that we could work with them as a strategic partner,” Crutchfield said.
Crutchfield said that InnerWireless is very knowledgeable and has demonstrated a real skill for understanding healthcare IT through a number of high-quality installations in other medical facilities.
Virginia Hospital Center also liked the fact that unlike other DAS manufacturers, InnerWireless takes full responsibility for all RF design work plus project manages the installation to guarantee results.
Follow ITEXPO on Twitter: twitter.com/itexpoAnil Sharma is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Anil’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jessica Kostek
