Infinet Wireless has helped significantly improve the ability of a major South American city to provide healthcare services to residents via its new wireless network platform.
Infinet Wireless has helped significantly improve the ability of a major South American city to provide healthcare services to residents via its new wireless network platform.
In Cartagena, Colombia, Infinet Wireless’ network of radio solutions has been deployed and used by its local partner Fibraxo to create a network for The Social Company of the State of Bolivar (ESE), responsible for healthcare provision. This new network gives ESE the means to reach even more citizens, expand its geographical coverage and unify its information to improve health services to the entire population in primary and secondary care headquarters throughout the district.
“Since the new infrastructure was deployed, we have witnessed a major increase and improvement in patient care, rising from an average of 100 people seen per day to approximately 500 people over the same period of time,” said Carlos de la Madrid, Regional Business Development Director for LATAM at Infinet Wireless. “Further benefits include providing ESE with the ability to upload patient data quicker and more accurately. ESE’s Local Hospitals of Cartagena are now able to synchronize digital clinical records to the data centres of the administrative headquarters, via a Health Manager application that allows the browsing of patients’ clinical histories.”
The new data network was implemented to cater for the increased number of patients attended to on a daily basis, rising above an average of 300 extra daily patients to emergency centres.
Wireless points of presence (PoP’s) have been created around the geographical area to be covered in order to connect the main data and processing centre with the 43 administrative ESE hospital branches. This replaces a legacy wireless platform which suffered from major delays for data transfers and sharing, resulting in poor service, loss of critical information and loss of financial revenue streams for the hospitals.
Further connectivity hubs have been installed in urban and rural areas, with the objective of satisfying the needs of the health care centres in the most vulnerable and remote places of the State. The wireless infrastructure enables ESE to deliver quality services to the entire population, especially in areas facing extreme poverty, such as Arroyo Grande, Arroyo de Piedra and Arroyo de las Canoas.
The deployed network consists of two types of overlay platforms: a cabled layer based on fibre optics, and a wireless layer using multiple radio links and Wi-Fi zones operating in frequency bands between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Unprecedented service quality and performance was achieved over the entire territory covered, especially in remote and rural areas.
The heart and hub of this platform was deployed in the strategic location of Cerro de la Popa, where point-to-point (PtP) links and point-to-multipoint (PtmP) base stations were installed using the InfiMAN 2x2 R5000-Qmxb beamforming technology, as well as a number of high-capacity InfiLINK 2x2 R5000-Lmn and R5000-Smn wireless units. All remote subscribers are now able to enjoy a bandwidth of up to 50Mbps.
"We chose Infinet Wireless’ solutions because of their performance levels that rival that of fibre optics, as well as its high throughputs, even at the subscriber end, and their ultra-low latency. The solution also offers interference mitigation and lightning protection solutions, as well as advanced data management utilities such as traffic prioritization, full Quality of Service (QoS), firewalling and routing,” said Wilmer Fabián Barros González, Project Manager at Fibraxo SAS.
González also said his firm intention is to expand the deployment of Infinet Wireless’ solutions in future projects in order to reach even more urban and rural areas, for example to the Sucre department.
Hernán Dager Peña, IT coordinator of the ESE Hospitals in Cartagena, said: “Our main requirement was a service that offered reliability, quality and stable connectivity in the 43 hospital branches, which includes the administrative headquarters, three hospitals, ten emergency health centres and ten external consultation centres.”
Peña added: “Fibraxo SAS offered us a robust platform based on both fibre optics and radio connectivity, with the latter provided by Infinet Wireless and working perfectly to meet the needs and requirements of our hospitals network. The health centres are spread around the state with long distances between them, yet the Fibraxo network has managed to cover seamlessly the entire area, as well the surrounding towns and islands.”
Product Adopted:Wireless Transmission