Extreme Networks to the rescue of hospital network infrastructure

What challenges are currently faced by IT teams in the healthcare industry?  

Medical facilities act like a living organism, and their ICT infrastructure is like a circulatory system. It keeps the hospital functioning properly, enabling the smooth transfer of vital information, patient data and medical records. On top of this, the rapid technological transformation and the many associated challenges, including staff shortages and the effects of a global pandemic. Despite these needs, many medical facilities still need to use older network infrastructures that cannot meet the new demands of staff and patients. The Třinec Hospital in the Czech Republic is one such facility that needed a digital network upgrade to bring smooth operations.   

A hospital with an outdated IT infrastructure – what to do?  

The Třinec hospital in numbers is 800 employees, 370 beds and more than 35,000 residents – potential patients in the area. And there are 1,000 pieces of equipment (from a visitor’s phone to an MRI machine) and many subscriptions in various locations managed by the IT department. With the pandemic and the increased number of patients, busy devices, and outdated systems, the problem of network efficiency was growing.   

More and more devices from different vendors, increasingly complex infrastructure

Třinec Hospital’s IT problems were exacerbated precisely during the pandemic when the network infrastructure was based on equipment from multiple suppliers. This served its purpose at the moment, but in the long term, it caused the IT department many problems. The decision was taken to introduce a tool that would enable central network management, better insight into connected devices and, therefore, better network control. And this was using existing hardware.   

About the solution – how Extreme Networks modernised the hospital’s infrastructure

The Třinec Hospital, given its previous positive experience with implementing Extreme Summit switches, turned to Extreme Networks for help in upgrading its network management. With the customer’s needs in mind, Extreme Networks implemented ExtremeCloud’s award-winning IQ Site Engine solution on the network, which provides a complete view of network devices running in or out of the cloud, including third-party devices, reducing lengthy and error-prone manual entry and updates. The head of the ICT department at Třinec Hospital found it to be the best for the diverse IT environment he managed. 

Benefits for the customer resulting from the implementation   

ExtremeCloud IQ Site Engine for Třinec Hospital’s IT infrastructure includes:  

• Ability to detect misconfiguration of local software agents – instead of downloading updates from a local secure server, they are downloaded from the public Internet.  
• Visual assistance in detecting missing VLAN configurations on network nodes.  
• Improved scheduling of configuration backups – used in less time through comprehensive application analytics.  
• Visibility and control over the multi-vendor environment – the IT team has excellent visibility into what is connected to the network, being able to isolate any gaps and unsecured devices within the network. This visibility also applies to the wireless network.  
• The ability to search for any device very quickly, even after moving it from one location to another, online and in real time. Detailed inventory, allowing the hospital’s IT team to see if there are any unwanted devices on the network.   
• Unified security for wired and wireless networks with in-depth visibility and control of users, devices and applications. Users and devices can now easily and securely join the network, and the IT team can authenticate and locate them very quickly and automatically. All this through a single, integrated user interface.  
• It blocks malicious communication when connecting medical devices. The solution provides policy control, enabling the IT team to comply with compliance rules and obligations in a diverse endpoint environment.  

Digital transformation of a healthcare facility step by step  

A multi-vendor solution from Extreme Networks at Trinec Hospital in the Czech Republic has proven successful. The implementation of ExtremeCloud IQ Site Engine has shown that there is no need for an immediate 100% network rebuild and replacement of all devices. It is a solution that extends the life of the existing network infrastructure.   

Trinec Hospital is planning further upgrades. These will simplify the network even further, automate it and segment it. Fabric switches and Wi-fi 6 access points from Extreme Networks will be the solution of choice for the hospital in the future.   

Extreme Networks products in the FCA brand portfolio   

As an Extreme Networks business partner, FCA’s portfolio of innovative Extreme Networks products and technologies is designed to, among other things, evolve your network – modifying it, selecting compatible solutions, providing protection against cyber attacks, or introducing a digital assistant to take over the IT department’s responsibilities for fault detection and troubleshooting.   

The goal: To make network management as simple as possible. Extreme Networks’ solutions help small IT teams grow their network and implement digital infrastructure transformation without replacing existing hardware.   

Explore the Extreme solutions in the FCA portfolio