Healthcare organizations are the latest target in Nortel Networks’ move to cater to industry verticals with its optical solutions, as well as enterprise and wireless solutions. In line with its new emphasis on hospitals and other health-related operations, Nortel at OFC this week provided a long list of its new customers in this arena. It declined to provide details on the value of the deals.
Nortel’s first vertical was the financial industry. It’s next likely target will be retail verticals, including the automotive industry. In addition to bringing enterprise solutions to these verticals, says Kevin Drury, senior manager of account marketing for Canada, Nortel works with carrier to help them get leverage with these customers. “Almost without exception, it’s one of our carrier partners that’s rolling out the system,” he says, but he declined to name the service providers involved in the Nortel deployments announced this week in the healthcare sector.
The equipment vendor announced this week at OFC that The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) has deployed an optical Ethernet solution from Nortel Networks which will replace its legacy network and will connect multiple hospitals and clinics in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The new network provides gigabit Ethernet capability, which will help position UPHS to drive reduced costs and to enhance patient care with innovative services like real-time diagnosis.
The gigabit Ethernet capability will allow UPHS to realize up to a 20 times increase in the available bandwidth between its hospital and clinic sites, allowing for instantaneous sharing of patient records among appropriate users. This will assist UPHS in complying with growing regulations surrounding reliable recovery of patient records, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security regulations.
Orlando Regional Healthcare (ORHS) deployed Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 3000 and OPTera Metro 5200 to converge its voice, data and storage networks, and to provide a uniform business continuity and disaster recovery solution across eight hospitals. With this optical backbone, ORHS has implemented a highly resilient, available and efficient network with the ability to support new applications for improved patient care, according to Nortel.
Erlanger Health Systems is using a wireless local area network solution from Nortel Networks to support a large-scale deployment of mobile nursing carts.
Centre Hospitalier Pierre-Le Gardeur is deploying converged enterprise solutions from Nortel Networks as it moves into a new building. These solutions will include Nortel Networks Succession IP Telephony, wireless LAN, security, Symposium Call Center, CallPilot unified messaging, and a redundant data networking infrastructure.
Calgary Health Region has deployed Nortel Networks IP contact center solutions after completing the largest telephone system upgrade in Calgary history.
The Credit Valley Hospital of Mississauga, Ontario has deployed Succession 1000 to complement a Meridian PBX solution that has been in use since the hospital’s inception.
And Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center relies on a data communications infrastructure from Nortel Networks to provide security, performance and reliability for all networking applications.
