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With growing volumes of patient-related data being processed and stored on computers, ICT has come to play a key role in the UK's National Health Service (NHS). This role will continue to expand as innovative new applications, many of them related to mobile and wireless computing, are rolled out.
Possession of advanced networks is a prerequisite for those who want to make full use of new technologies. Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHNT), for example, has recently undertaken a major initiative to refresh its network infrastructure. PHNT provides general hospital services to 450,000 people in the Plymouth area of the UK. Its main site is Derriford Hospital, one of the country's largest hospitals.
Although PHNT relied on Cisco networking products in the past, its new network is based on ProCurve Networking by HP technology. According to Tony Sweet, principal network operations analyst, network maintenance costs have traditionally been high at PHNT. ProCurve Networking features such as the lifetime warranty provided a way of cutting these costs substantially.
"ProCurve offered us the opportunity to reduce TCO while at the same time expanding network bandwidth and flexibility," he commented.
PHNT worked with HP's European Design Centre to develop a resilient network design to support its 24x7 operation. According to Sweet, the HP team was extremely flexible and totally committed to the success of the project. PHNT, which assumed responsibility for configuration and implementation, found ProCurve Networking technology to be fast and easy to deploy.
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The new 3,000-user network has a core of three ProCurve Networking Routing Switches 9300m series, with ProCurve Networking Switches 2600 and 5300xl series in the periphery. ProCurve Networking Wireless Access Points 420 have also been installed, while ProCurve Manager Plus is used to manage upgrades and inventory.
The new network has enabled PHNT to introduce major enhancements such as wireless access and a Mitel IP telephony solution. In Sweet's view, the use of HP technology accelerated the implementation of these enhancements.
The network will also provide effective support for a host of other advances in areas such as electronic patient records and picture archiving and communication systems (PACSs). Because HP uses standards-based technology, PHNT has the widest possible choice of applications as well as maximum flexibility to further develop its network. Furthermore, claims Sweet, the cost-effectiveness of the HP solution enables the trust to minimise its investment and thus free up more money to spend directly on patient care.
"In a nutshell, ProCurve offers us significantly better price/performance than any other networking products," he said. "We have achieved a lot more with our money."
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