St. Johns Episcopal Hospital selects Alcatel for converged communications solution
Announcement posted by Alcatel-Lucent 23 Mar 2005
St. Johns is a 332-bed community teaching hospital with an adjacent 163-bed nursing home serving the Rockaways and the Five Towns areas. St. Johns, operated by Episcopal Health Service Inc. (EHS), a not-for-profit healthcare company, serves Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau Counties.
Hospital officials have invested in a converged communications system in part to enable them to integrate healthcare applications with the telephony system to improve staff access to information and patient access to doctors. Handling over 400 calls per hour, this type of system is essential to EHS success.
"Reliable communication is a major factor in the way the hospital does business any downtime could impact patient care, and that is unacceptable," said Glenn Taber, Director of Technical Services & Operations for EHS.
The Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise replaces an aging voice communications network. St. Johns worked with Alcatel Business Partner Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group to create a homogenous voice communications network across the campus that simplifies system management through a single management tool and offers users the same feature set from any phone.
According to Taber, the server-based Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise will soon allow St. Johns to integrate the telephony system with the hospitals health information system to provide call automation and reduce the burden of growing call volumes. Future applications include wireless campus mobility and widespread IP telephony.
The foundation of the converged network is a new Gigabit Ethernet backbone network based on the Alcatel OmniSwitch 7800 that replaced an ATM network. Users get a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connection to this network through Alcatel OmniStack 6600 stackable switches deployed throughout the hospital and EHS headquarters. The 2,400-port network comes complete with Alcatels Smart Continuous Switching features for reliability.
"After evaluating a number of alternatives that turned out to be more complicated and costly, we found that the Alcatel converged solution offered exceptional technology benefits and was easier to manage, at a lower price point all-in-all a better solution," Taber concluded.
Tom Burns, Senior Vice President and GM of Alcatels network infrastructure activities noted, "Alcatel realizes the needs of healthcare providers to deliver quality health services while watching the bottom line a reliable network can provide the business applications to accomplish that. Pairing high-end features and value enables enterprises to protect their current investment and migrate to the future seamlessly, while supporting business-enhancing applications with confidence."
Hospital officials have invested in a converged communications system in part to enable them to integrate healthcare applications with the telephony system to improve staff access to information and patient access to doctors. Handling over 400 calls per hour, this type of system is essential to EHS success.
"Reliable communication is a major factor in the way the hospital does business any downtime could impact patient care, and that is unacceptable," said Glenn Taber, Director of Technical Services & Operations for EHS.
The Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise replaces an aging voice communications network. St. Johns worked with Alcatel Business Partner Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group to create a homogenous voice communications network across the campus that simplifies system management through a single management tool and offers users the same feature set from any phone.
According to Taber, the server-based Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise will soon allow St. Johns to integrate the telephony system with the hospitals health information system to provide call automation and reduce the burden of growing call volumes. Future applications include wireless campus mobility and widespread IP telephony.
The foundation of the converged network is a new Gigabit Ethernet backbone network based on the Alcatel OmniSwitch 7800 that replaced an ATM network. Users get a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connection to this network through Alcatel OmniStack 6600 stackable switches deployed throughout the hospital and EHS headquarters. The 2,400-port network comes complete with Alcatels Smart Continuous Switching features for reliability.
"After evaluating a number of alternatives that turned out to be more complicated and costly, we found that the Alcatel converged solution offered exceptional technology benefits and was easier to manage, at a lower price point all-in-all a better solution," Taber concluded.
Tom Burns, Senior Vice President and GM of Alcatels network infrastructure activities noted, "Alcatel realizes the needs of healthcare providers to deliver quality health services while watching the bottom line a reliable network can provide the business applications to accomplish that. Pairing high-end features and value enables enterprises to protect their current investment and migrate to the future seamlessly, while supporting business-enhancing applications with confidence."