Network Solution for Regional Small- and Medium-sized Hospitals

I. Background

The Notice of the Work Plan for Comprehensively Improving the Comprehensive Capability of County-level Hospitals 2018-2020 issued in October 2018 specified that the aim to upgrading some county-level secondary hospitals to tertiary hospitals. The massive increase in the number of beds requires the hospital to expand itself or build new hospital sites, and therefore there is a surge in the number of infrastructure construction projects for information systems.

The following issues should be solved for the information system construction of small- and medium-sized hospitals:

Mobility: Mobile medical care and mobile office have put forward higher requirements for the authority and security management of wireless access users in hospitals.

IoT-based: There are various IoT terminals in the smart campus. Hence, we need to find a way to quickly access these terminals and provide security isolation for businesses. The terminals need to be able to quickly identify the network and go online.

Complex: The traditional O&M mode is powerless when faced with massive access of patients, medical staff, and management personnel, as well as complex equipment and authority configuration

II. Solution

The H3C smart campus network solution (AD-Campus) for hospitals introduces the technology of SDN+VXLAN. By constructing a new-generation flexible basic campus network based on VXLAN and related software-defined concepts, it enables interconnection and unified management of multiple hospital branches, secure business isolation, and visualized smart O&M, with functions such as the automated deployment of devices and secure access of IoT terminals.

III. Highlights of solution

Network changes as required:

The campus network is decoupled from the location, the policy business changes as required, the application service is distributed on demand, and the campus network policy is deployed with one click.

Simplified convergence:

The wired and wireless convergence of the hospital's network enables multi-scenario linkage, cross-campus service deployment and scheduling, and network security integration.

Things connected by types:

The new campus network enables automated identification, sorting and management of multiple terminals in the hospital, as well as the automated deployment of devices. Besides, it integrates H3C Endpoints Profiling System (EPS) for security management.

Predictable network assurance:

The overall network health of the hospital is visualized and the network faults can be quickly located, with proactive and simple O&M.

IV. Customer’s value

Secure network policies, user security authentication, authority security management, automatic and secure access of massive terminals, as well as logical isolation of internal and external networks ensure safe operation of the campus network.

Whole-process business management, automated device deployment, automated service deployment, automated fault replacing, and unified cross-campus management enable whole-process management of the campus network of hospitals.

Predictable network assurance allows that the overall network health of the hospital is visualized and the network faults can be quickly located, with proactive and simple O&M.

V. Best practices

Founded in 1943, the First People's Hospital of Shuangliu is a modern comprehensive hospital integrating medical treatment, nursing, health care, rehabilitation, teaching, and scientific research with a long history of more than 70 years. It is among the first batch of regional and county-level hospitals in Sichuan to become a Grade-III Class-B comprehensive hospital.

Focused on the reconstruction of the hospital's key networks and the network platform construction of its new campus, the project adopted H3C's wired and wireless integrated solution. The solution integrates the wireless IoT technology to create a new platform for the intelligent application of the new hospital building. The SDN+VXLAN (AD-Campus) solution enables the integrated management of the original and new network of the hospital, unified allocation of IP addresses, user access authentication, and quick device deployment. With all of these, H3C helped the hospital build a stable, reliable, safe, and intelligent new-generation campus network.