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Choosing the right network infrastructure for hospitals 

The infrastructure design and technology must accommodate rising demands and the complex requirements of a converged environment need to be taken into account. When choosing a new network infrastructure or expanding an existing installation, it is vital to take the following points into consideration:

• Is there enough flexibility to easily adapt the network to the ever changing needs of healthcare services?

• Can cost-effectiveness be increased by reducing, for example, installation, monitoring and maintenance costs, or space requirements?

• Is the performance and agility of chosen digital infrastructure sufficient to improve the efficiency of healthcare services provided?

 A fibre solution will offer more flexibility in terms of bandwidth and Moves Adds and Changes whilst also require less space and reduces the building costs. Fibre to the Office (FTTO) is an option to consider when you want to have an expandable, agile network. This combines fibre’s speed, reliability and long distance coverage with the Ethernet benefits of copper. Fibre is laid vertically from central building distributor to hospital floors. From there, cable runs horizontally to an FTTO switch installed at the workstation or service consolidation point, near WAPs or other devices. Switches ensure intelligent conversion from fibre to copper and vice versa, feed terminal devices with data and power and make it easy to set up ring topologies for redundancy at user level.

Fibre for your hospital

A copper network is perfectly adequate for many user cases, whereas fibre is faster but more costly. The choice depends on several factors: the number of ports required, the number of users per port, the type of applications to be used, distances to be passed and available space for floor distribution hardware and cabling.

Find out more about putting together an FTTO network and choosing the right medically certified switch for your system.