Healthcare Solutions Guide

Allied Telesis Solution for Healthcare

With our proven history of delivering highly reliable and feature-rich advanced network solutions, more and more healthcare providers are turning to Allied Telesis to achieve their objectives.

Allied Telesis has been implementing cutting-edge healthcare networks for many years, so we understand the need to supply advanced network services without increasing operational complexity. Our high-value product and service portfolio provides the security, mobility and high-performance network you need, with easy management for lower operational costs, both now and well into the future.

Let’s look at how Allied Telesis meets the challenges faced in healthcare and provides solutions that enable better outcomes for patients and the entities that treat them.

Looking to the Future

Allied Telesis products optimize your technology investments by fully integrating with existing systems and applications. As new business applications are developed, your network can easily adapt as our products help you build a more efficient and progressive infrastructure.

As new and exciting technologies are implemented in the provision of continuous care, Allied Telesis products remain at the forefront in providing a network infrastructure to facilitate patient access to the best care.

The transition from paper to electronic health records concentrates information flow to within the IT infrastructure. At the same time, the development of an integrated healthcare system requires uninterrupted communication between different hospitals and to remote clinics and facilities.

As this transition is fully implemented, the high availability and accessibility of the IT infrastructure become vital for the whole healthcare ecosystem.

The Allied Telesis unstoppable network access solution has been developed to ensure that any network is able to survive multiple faults while still maintaining connectivity in a wide range of network architectures, thus providing a high available solution.

Within a complex system, the high availability has to consider multiple factors, where IT high availability is only one of the factors.

Network Equipment Power Supply

In the hospital, the continuity of power supply must be guaranteed by using a battery backup and an automated generator. The networking equipment can trust in this single power source but must also be designed to withstand the event of an internal PSU failure.

Allied Telesis proposes a whole series of equipment with a redundant PSU system so that if one of the two units fail, the equipment can still remain fully operational, even in a blackout.

Simplified Network Device Power Supply

Many devices in hospitals are connected directly to network switches. The use of PoE-enabled equipment to power these devices further enables backup power provisioning to the switch and delivers power back to the attached devices.

Virtual Stacking

Multiple Allied Telesis switches can be connected to form a single virtual switch. Together, the Virtual Chassis Stacking technology with Link Aggregation provides a resilient solution that is able to survive a link or equipment failure.

Ring Protection

When the distance between the devices is large, a ring topology for the network is the optimal solution. Allied Telesis provides Ring Protection protocols to save your network from link failure while providing a resilient infrastructure.

Redundant Core and Disaster Recovery

In the case where a further degree of resiliency is required, Allied Telesis can also provide core switches with an optimally redundant configuration for a disaster recovery architecture. This is accomplished by a virtual stack with network devices located in different rooms or even buildings.

Cyber-attacks to medical institutions are on the rise and becoming frequent. Unauthorized access to patient data, ransomware and other types of attacks affect the daily operations and result in serious risk to patient privacy.

Keeping internal connections to resources secure while enabling internet access for staff and guests is mandatory for the healthcare industry.

The traditional security models that focus on preventing attacks from getting inside the network are not enough since attacks can easily come from within. For example, an infected laptop, tablet or IoT device connected to the network can pose a serious threat.

In parallel, attackers have increased the sophistication in their methods and now threats come in so many forms that maintaining a secure yet effective network has become a time-consuming and costly challenge.

While the traditional firewall-based approach is effective to detect and block threats and viruses coming from the Internet, it shows its limitations if the attack comes from inside the network. At this stage, the attack will spread east/west on the network (i.e., from one connected device to another), where it can be detected by the firewall only once the threat tries to cross the border to the internet. Once the threat is detected, an administrator can be alerted and asked to begin the remediation process.

Unfortunately this process depends on human resources, with reaction time that can be minutes to hours or even days depending on the resource availability and personal skills.

The Self-Defending Network

The Self-Defending Network solution provides an integrated approach to network security automating manual IT operations and protecting from threats coming from both wired and wireless access devices.

Without the need for endpoint agents or software, the Self-Defending Network is able to automatically respond to threats once they are identified.

Firewall and security appliances identify threats, then the intelligent engine implementing the Isolation Adapter technology built into our AMF–Sec controller responds immediately to isolate the affected part of the network and quarantine the suspect device. Remediation can be applied so the device can re-join the network with minimal disruption. Responses are configurable, and comprehensive logging provides a clear audit trail.

To enable a Self-Defending Network that helps organizations avoid lost time and unnecessary disruption to network services, the AMF-Sec Controller is key to our innovative and award-winning AMF Security solution.

Autonomous Secure WAN Management

Having multiple connections with different performances and cost requires continuous attention. Allied Telesis Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) simplifies remote site connection control with an autonomous and centralized management tool.

SD-WAN Orchestrator is part of Vista Manager and centrally manages branch office connections for reliable and secure application delivery. With this you can set acceptable performance metrics, automatically optimize and load-balance application delivery, and easily monitor WAN performance.

SD-WAN, with Allied Telesis Application-Aware Firewalls, provides an integrated WAN security and WAN traffic management solution in a single device.

In addition to the medical staff carrying mobile devices from room to room, a large number of medical devices such as image diagnostic and wearable monitors require a stable wireless network to provide or access information in real time.

For security reasons, devices with access to patient data require the user to reauthenticate once the network connection drops. For this reason, an uninterrupted roaming-free wireless solution is considered value-added for the healthcare market. A wireless connection is also used by medical devices as a backup link in case the wired connection fails, adding reliability to the whole network solution.

Although following the wireless technical standard improve overall performance, there are still limitations that require deep technical skills in order to implement a stable wireless network. In a wireless network, client disconnection and slow communication are typical wireless problems usually caused by one or more more technical issues. Interferences between radio channels, external wireless sources not under the IT control, and access points’ signal strength are the main reasons for wireless problems.

In a dynamic healthcare environment, there is a crucial need for a continuous network with monitoring and skilled IT resources to maintain the installation under control to provide a valuable wireless service.

No Compromise Wi-Fi

The Allied Telesis No Compromise Wi-Fi solution ensures reliable, high-performance wireless connections everywhere they are needed without increasing skilled resources.

By analyzing signal coverage gaps and Wi-Fi access point interference, Autonomous Wave Control (AWC) automatically delivers a high-quality wireless experience. This allows you to reduce your dependency on skilled network engineers and enjoy lower operating costs.

AWC Channel Blanket (AWC-CB) enables control of hybrid access points that simultaneously provide single and multi-channel Wi-Fi connectivity. Channel Blanket is the best radio technology to provide a seamless connection to critical personal and medical devices as they move around the hospital.

Heart rate monitors, blood glucose sensors and smart beds are just a few of the mobile devices that need reliable wireless connectivity for the best patient care. AWC-CB also enables device location tracking to easily find equipment and reduce the loss of expensive devices.