Case studies: Eastbourne Hospital

Cisilion implements the award winning Wireless Network in the NHS for Eastbourne Hospital

The customer

East Sussex Hospital Trusts was formed in 2001 from Hastings and Rother and Eastbourne NHS Trusts. The trust has over 1,150 patient beds and 5,000 staff across its two main sites of Hastings and Eastbourne Hospitals.

The challenge

East Sussex Hospitals has 35,000 planned admissions, 32,900 emergency admissions, 291,000 outpatient appointments and 89,000 Accident and Emergency cases. Given these figures, even basic administration tasks can become very time consuming, impacting considerably the productivity of staff.

Eastbourne District General Hospital required a Wireless LAN Solution to cover the patient wards, outpatients, casualty, intensive care and consultant's area of the hospital.

This solution was intended to allow East Sussex Hospitals more efficient use of doctor and administrator time by giving them access to patient's medical records and administration systems in any part of the hospital.

The solution

After a detailed site survey it was calculated that 140 Cisco Aironet 1200 Access-Points would be required to cover the main patient and consultant areas.

Security was a priority for the installation, since patients' records would be accessed across the network. For Security reasons it was decided not to use static WEP keys, as these are easy to break. Cisilion's consultants installed a VPN solution based around a Cisco VPN 3020 concentrator which encrypts the user data with 3DES on the Wireless LAN. Using 3DES also meets the UK Government Security Manual V requirements for transmitting data on Wireless LAN.

The Cisco VPN Client was installed with the auto-initiate feature enabled on all Microsoft Windows laptops. This allowed the installation to be virtually 'Plug and Play' from a point of view of the medical staff.

In order to monitor the 140 Aironet 1200 Access-Points, the Cisco Works 2000 Wireless LAN Solution Engine (WLSE) 2.5 was installed along with 6 x 24 Port 3550-24 In-Line power switches used to power the access points.

The benefits

At the time of writing the Eastbourne Hospital project is currently the largest deployment of a WLAN solution within the NHS. It has already begun to transform the way in which medical staff work, allowing them to access patient records directly at the bedside, or wherever they happen to be.

"In some instances, where some aspect of a patient's long-term record becomes relevant to a current case, the system can save hours or even days. The implications for speed and efficiency of treatment are incalculable. Without wireless, it simply would not be possible."