Telecom Lead Europe: Avaya has completed a network
transformation project for Norway’s largest influential medical centre.
Newly formed as the result of a merger between three
local health trusts, Oslo University Hospital required a shared network capable
of supporting a variety of applications, services and projects for the various
groups brought together by the merger. The step-by-step implementation began in
late 2011.
Oslo University Hospital was created as part of a
government initiative to centralize services, generate operational efficiencies
and standardize processes. It is a highly specialized facility that operates
across 40 locations in Norway, employs 20,000 staff and has an annual operating
budget of EUR 2.2bn. As well as being responsible for patient care and
emergency services for the citizens of Oslo, the hospital is also a hub for
much of Norway’s medical research. Sykhuspartner IKT, a division of
South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, provides IT services to the
hospitals in the region, including Oslo University Hospital.
The hospital set out to create a common, standard network
to support all three health trusts. Their aim was to drive efficiencies by
delivering a standard user experience for staff as well as patients, allow
management to share best practices, link specialists in different locations and
create workplace flexibility.
Oslo University Hospital selected Avaya’s Virtual
Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA) to provide it with a new flexible, high
performance enterprise network. As a result, the hospital was able to create a
shared network that brought together three hospitals, extending the
virtualization of the network to support different user groups, projects,
services and applications.
Based on the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) open standard,
the Avaya VENA Enterprise Fabric capability minimizes the risk of errors by
simplifying the provisioning of new services and the configuration of networks.
As new services are required and new specialist departments within the hospital
are created, Avaya VENA Enterprise Fabric enables changes to be made only at
the edge of the network, rather than on every device and every link, so that
they take place more efficiently and with less risk. This flexibility enables
the hospital to improve time-to-service rather than needing to plan months in
advance.
Oslo University Hospital’s new network is now robust and
secure, eliminating the potential for traffic to ripple through untraced,
affecting distribution switches and slowing performance. Third-party suppliers,
such as the hospital’s hotel and parking services, can leverage the common
infrastructure without the risk of collateral impact. And it maximises access
to expensive medical equipment, helping to improve the overall standard of
patient care. With Avaya’s Enterprise Fabric as the foundation, Oslo University
Hospital’s network can maintain a high level of availability for its critical
care services at all times.
This announcement highlights Avaya’s commitment to
bringing The Power of Weâ„¢ to every Avaya customer to help drive faster
collaboration, smarter decisions and better business results.
“High availability is a critical requirement for our
network. The doctors here make life and death decisions every day and we can’t
afford any downtime. Hospitals are inherently risk-averse and are rarely early
adopters, but we were struck by the benefits that Avaya VENA Enterprise Fabric
implementation of Shortest Path Bridging could provide our network. We knew the
risks of undertaking this project, but found Avaya to be the ideal partner to
help us succeed. As soon as the technology was available, we signed up,”
said Espen Holthe, network engineer, Sykehuspartner IKT.
“Hospitals run some of the most data-intensive,
mission-critical networks on the planet — they can’t afford to take risks at
the expense of their patients. We’ve been able to leverage our experience in
deploying large, multi-campus environments at medical institutions around the
world to create a new core network for Oslo University Hospital that is
flexible, secure and easy to manage. By bringing to life The Power of Weâ„¢,
Avaya is allowing the Hospital make changes more quickly and easily. We’re
helping them build for the future so that they can provide better care for
their patients,” Olivier Baraquin, EMEA data and video leader, Avaya EMEA.