January/February/March 2020 I 57
alleviates healthcare organizations’ resistance to above-
ceiling work. When cabling work requires installers to
remove ceiling tile, hospital staff must deploy a tent
and a HEPA filter to protect nearby equipment.
Strategic placement of the fiber-based LAN created
enough capacity to support the next few generations of
LAN speeds without having to pull out 80 percent of the
cabling infrastructure. The team also was able to leverage
that fiber infrastructure to support the all-fiber DAS.
Upgrades to future generations of cellular technology
will require only card changes in the data center rather
than swapping out the infrastructure. It is estimated that
POL may support the hospital’s communications requirements
for the next 25 to 30 years.
Within Guthrie Corning Hospital, POL now supports
practically every communications service that the facility
requires: data, VoIP, IP cameras, access control, building
management systems, pneumatic tubes, Wi-Fi, and imaging.
This includes the hospital’s picture archiving and
communications system (PACS), which distributes images
to doctors within the hospital as well as to healthcare
personnel in other locations. Hospital managers opted
not to have any analog voice service. The only POTS
connectivity available is for fax machines for which the
hospital uses traditional hard-wired copper.
ADDRESSING TODAY’S NEEDS
AND TOMORROW’S DEMANDS
Having the right LAN infrastructure in place is critical to
all people in healthcare environments. Patient satisfaction
rises when they know their care, in part, is provided for
over a reliable, secure and high-performing network infra-
structure. With the right LAN in place, patients and their
families can access broadband services anywhere in the
facilities via wired, Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity. At the
same time, hospital administration benefits from the
reduced operating costs of the simple, scalable fiber-based
network. And, medical staff enjoys the reliable connec-
tivity that powers the technologies, applications and
health records upon which they rely to provide quality
patient care.
The passive optical LAN can unify healthcare services
and networks while reducing costs, improving network
reliability and increasing security. The solution offers
unique benefits relative to HIPAA protocols, PCI compliance,
infection control (e.g., reduce HEPA tenting) and
ANSI/TIA-1179-A cabling. Network managers can provision
over fiber scalable interactive patient care, patient
monitoring, entertainment, nurse call systems, clinical
information, access control, security, surveillance, automation,
safety, environmental controls, CCTV, AV and all
forms of video. It should be considered as a choice for full
service hospitals that need reliable network coverage in
areas, such as waiting rooms, nurse stations, patient
rooms, exam rooms, emergency care, operating rooms,
intensive care, recovery, diagnostics radiolo gy, the
pharmacy, therapy rooms, cafeterias, administration
and medical offices, and affiliated clinics. With new
technologies entering the market every day, the list
can go on and on.
It is counterproductive and expensive to continue
to deploy copper-based LANs, which have higher CapEx
and OpEx costs, consume more energy and monopolize
greater amounts of space; they are also less stable and
can pose a security risk. This is why POL has become an
important technology to consider for healthcare facilities
striving to meet and exceed ICT expectations over the
next 30 years.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: John Hoover is a senior product
manager at Tellabs Access and serves as board director for
APOLAN. Over the past 15 years, he has focused on early PON
deployments, video implementations, wireless technologies, and
most recently POL adoption for virtually every vertical industry.
He is a graduate of California State University Long Beach with
a major in business and a minor in economics. John can be
reached at john.hoover@tellabs.com.
link