Mobile app access key to N.H. hospital's WLAN upgrade

The second busiest acute care hospital in New Hampshire is beefing up its wireless network for mobility applications in an effort to keep up with rapid organizational growth and an influx of new mobile technologies.

Concord Hospital, a 295-bed regional medical center located in Concord, N.H., increasingly relies on its wireless network for mobility applications that contribute to the overall quality of patient care. The hospital recently tapped Pleasanton, Calif.-based Trapeze Networks for the project, which will enable the healthcare organization to support 3,200 employees, including over 750 physicians and nurses across the hospital's main campus. It also will support more than 10 remote sites, which serve over 145,000 residents.

The Trapeze Networks clustering and hitless failover techniques streamline adds, moves and changes and have reduced operating costs up to 60 percent, according to a company statement. Mark Starry, director of enterprise architecture and security at Concord Hospital, credits Trapeze with being the only WLAN vendor with instant failover capabilities in its wireless controllers--so AP traffic is immediately picked up by another controller if one fails--without any effect on performance or availability.

In fact, the hitless failover approach is the main reason Concord Hospital believes the availability of its numerous wireless voice and video applications is nearing the five-nines level of availability that the medical center's core wired network provides.