Zero Roaming Solution for Mobile Healthcare

I. Background

At present, the information system construction of medical institutions has achieved some great results, for example, the application of HIS, EMR, and PACS, which brings great convenience to outpatient registration, clinical diagnosis, medical inspection, and so on.

The development of WLAN helps solve many problems in the work of traditional medical staff. Hence, mobile healthcare is popularized and plays a crucial role in scenarios such as patient applications, diagnosis and treatment applications, nursing applications, and in-house decision-making.

In December 2017, the National Health Commission formulated the Technical Guide for the Application of Hospital Informatization Construction to standardize and promote the information system construction of secondary and above hospitals. This guide clarified the specific content of mobile terminals, mobile infusion services, and mobile ward rounds. The development of mobile healthcare is more and more inseparable from the application of information technology under the support of various emerging technologies.

II. User needs

Service continuity assurance: Nurses and doctors need to hold mobile terminals for ward rounds. During the movement, the terminals need to switch APs according to the signal strength. In the traditional wireless networking scenario, this process is often interrupted. Moreover, there are signal dead points due to wall thickness and room structure, resulting in poor user experiences.

Bandwidth assurance: Some solutions on the market solve the problem of service interruption during roaming, but they cannot guarantee access quality. When the medical staff use mobile terminals for work, they often encounter problems such as packet loss, slow PDA connection, and wireless interference.

O&M efficiency assurance: A convenient and efficient solution is needed for system upgrade and maintenance and fault location when deploying a large number of APs.

III. Overview of solution

The H3C's zero roaming solution for mobile healthcare is the first wireless solution in the industry that solves the problem of signal coverage in multiple rooms and service continuity of hospitals. The solution uses a design of "main AP + sub APs". Compared with the traditional AC+Fit AP solution, it adds the role of "main AP". The CAPWAP protocol is still used to encapsulate data and manage packets between the AC and the main AP. The sub APs and the main AP are encapsulated in wireless formats. The wireless packets are directly processed by the main AP, and the sub APs are only used for radio frequency forwarding. This solution provides a stable network guarantee for mobile ward rounds, mobile first aid, mobile treatment, and other medical and nursing work, and solves the mobile business needs of nurses, doctors, and patients through a single network.

IV. Highlights of solution

Full service continuity

This solution solves the problems of network interruption and poor signal quality during the development of mobile healthcare in the past, and the AC actively probes high-quality AP signals. During the movement of various medical terminals, the "Terminator" can actively switch to the optimized link before the medical staff are aware of it.

Super experience

With the "ultra-thin" architecture, the indoor AP is thinner, and sub APs can be deployed in scenarios such as wards, nurse stations, and restrooms depending on the building structure. Wi-Fi coverage is good in every part of building. The number of access terminals in a single room and the access bandwidth of a single terminal have been greatly improved compared to that of the conventional solution. Besides, this solution is well suitable for applications with high bandwidth requirements such as PACS image retrieval and mobile visit.

Smart O&M

Equipped with the Oasis Intelligent Operation Maintenance platform, this solution enables fast fault location, active perception of potential dangers, and intelligent network optimization, which improves O&M efficiency and assists in the work of doctors and nurses.

IoT extension

At present, hospitals are in urgent need of IoT applications such as physical sign monitoring, baby theft prevention, and smart infusion. Taking into account medical usage scenarios and diversified IoT needs, the mobile healthcare zero-roaming solution supports IoT extension and its related applications such as RFID/ZigBee/BLE, laying the foundation for the follow-up development of related businesses.

V. Best practices

Peking University Third Hospital

Founded in 1958, under the supervision of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, Peking University Third Hospital (PUTH) is a comprehensive Grade-III Class-A hospital integrating medical services, education, scientific research, disease prevention, rehabilitation, and health care. PUTH has the greatest spinal surgery department among hospitals in China. The Reproductive Medicine Center, where the first In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) baby in mainland China was born, has the most comprehensive treatment methods, and is one of the largest reproductive centers around the world. With the great efforts of several generations, PUTH has become one of the domestic Grade-III Class-A hospitals with 20 national key clinical specialties.

With the continuous improvement of hospital information system construction, the construction of a new-generation wireless LAN is on the agenda. After several inspections and tests, the hospital finally selected H3C's zero roaming solution for mobile healthcare. In this solution, a wireless LAN with strong signal, high bandwidth, and smooth roaming is deployed to meet new work requirements such as mobile health care and IoT-based medical diagnosis and treatment. The solution uses a multi-AP hybrid networking, and is deployed depending on the needs and construction structures of different scenarios such as outpatient and emergency building, sports medicine building, ward building, ENT building, scientific research building, administrative building, and reproductive center.

At present, medical staff in PUTH use mobile terminals for work every day to carry out work under the escort of H3C's zero roaming solution for mobile healthcare. The hospital is also constantly exploring cutting-edge solutions for IoT-based diagnosis and treatment based on this solution, aiming to improve service levels and contribute to the implementation of the Healthy China Initiative.