Created on 19.1.2007
St. Richards Hospital in Chichester is assisted by the Sussex Health Informatics Service (HIS) Team. The county wide delivery of services and selection of technologies is recommended by the HIS team on behalf of the NHS Trusts within Sussex.
St Richards Hospital had a requirement to provide connectivity for Computers on Wheels (CoWs) in certain wards and areas of the Hospital as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The use of CoWs was required to provide access to the Care Records System (CRS) at the bedside.
Sussex HIS decided initially to look at Cisco, Trapeze, Alcatel, Meru and Symbol WLAN technologies and the chosen technology would be the recommended vendor for any of the Trusts within Sussex for a period of 18-24 months.
A Request For Information document was issued to the various parties that stated specific requirements for bandwidth, scalability, security, centralised policy and management control, suitability for IPT/VoIP and availability. At this stage pricing was also required to be submitted as cost effectiveness was also a part of the selection criteria.
The Alcatel WLAN solution provided by Khipu Networks was short listed along with Meru and Symbol. Khipu Networks solution met all the selection criteria whilst also providing additional features such as remote Access Points (AP), that would enable remote sites to have centrally controlled WLAN over an ADSL circuit and 'Air Locking', to ensure that rogue APs were detected and taken out of service.
Khipu Networks proposed the use of the Alcatel OAW 6000 series master controller that would ultimately support 512 APs and the OAW 4324 series controller that would be placed at another site to provide offsite Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity for coverage of WLAN in the event of a master controller failure.
St Richards Hospital required 47 access points with a minimum coverage of 5.5Mbps in the event of an AP failure. The Khipu Networks solution was chosen due to the unique way that Alcatel WLAN was able to provide coverage by automatically detecting a failure and boosting the power of neighbouring APs to enable seamless roaming between APs for IP Telephony handsets in case they are deployed in the future.
Sussex HIS also chose the Khipu Networks solution due to cost effectiveness and its compliance to the NHS Best Practice Guidelines for Wireless LAN by using the features of the Wireless Intrusion Prevention and Policy Enforcement Firewall security modules within WLAN solution. The Khipu Networks solution provided additional security to ensure the Sussex HIS were not compromising future proofing of the technology decision based on price. Additionally, Alcatel's pedigree within the NHS particularly for WLAN helped Sussex HIS to choose the Alcatel WLAN technology.
About the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, St Richards Hospital - www.rwst.nhs.uk
The Royal West Sussex NHS Trust is a leading provider of acute health services. The Trust manages St Richard's Hospital in Chichester which is nationally recognised for its high quality care, friendly staff, new facilities and attractive environment. The Trust employs over 2,500 members of staff and serves 212,000 people in Western West Sussex. Core services include accident and emergency, acute medicine and surgery, cancer services, general surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics (including special care baby unit), trauma and orthopaedics, specialist services of cardiology, vascular and maxillo-facial surgery. St Richard's Hospital is a 2-star NHS Trust in the beautiful cathedral city of Chichester. The 2005 Dr Foster Hospital Guide rates St. Richard's as the top hospital in the South East and in 2004, the guide placed them top for patient satisfaction in the region. National benchmarking company CHKS says they are one of England's top 40 hospitals for clinical care and have been for the last 6 years.
The Hospital handles 144,000 outpatient appointments, 49,000 A&E attendances, 35,500 inpatients, 15,500 day case procedures and 2,250 births annually.
About Alcatel-Lucent www.alcatel-lucent.com
Alcatel-Lucent's vision is to enrich people’s lives by transforming the way the world communicates. Born with an unparalleled ability to offer end-to-end communications solutions to our customers, we are focused on enhancing client relationships and enriching the lives of people through communications. Expert, driven, intuitive, innovative, Alcatel-Lucent is the first truly global communications solutions provider, with the most complete end-to-end portfolio of solutions and services in the industry. Alcatel-Lucent is a leading provider of IP communication and networking WLAN and LAN solutions. Our enterprise portfolio enhances business communications for small, medium and large enterprises and public sector institutions worldwide. Alcatel-Lucent has been working with the healthcare, finance, government, education and hospitality sectors for many years. On the basis of this extensive experience, it has developed user-centric solutions that are tailored to the needs of your industry.
About Khipu Networks Limited - www.khipu-networks.com
Khipu Networks are a UK based advanced systems integrator, focussing on supplying innovative secure compliant infrastructure solutions across the public and private sector. The company is a leading adopter of new and best in breed technology, expert technical staff ensure that customers get the solutions they need, when they want them and how they need them. The ethos is to ensure that the customer has the edge on the security and compliance of their network and not the attacker. Hampshire based Khipu Networks Ltd are the security division of the White Clarke Group of companies. Khipu Networks are Alcatel Direct Partners and the exclusive reseller of Bradford Campus Manager in the UK and Ireland.
