Healthcare facility managers have an undeniably tough job. They must keep a careful eye on infrastructure in order to fulfill the daunting task of increasing productivity while protecting patients’ well being. One absolute must when it comes to creating this optimal patient care environment is making sure that a facility’s underlying communications network is secure, reliable and efficient for today and tomorrow’s voice and data services. To meet that challenge there is one clear cost-efficient answer: Embracing passive optical LAN technology. Instead of relying on a copper-based, point-to-point LAN, a passive fiber-based infrastructure saves up to 30 to 50 percent of capital costs, 50 to 70 percent of operational costs and 90 percent of rack space real estate. At the same time, it exceeds legacy network availability in Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – a critical factor for the healthcare industry. Here are the top five healthcare market benefits that industry players can leverage with passive optical LAN. Lower power needs = increase cost-savings: As a passive architecture, fiber LAN removes all power requirements within the Optical Distribution Network (ODN). In additional to requiring less power, POL requires significantly less equipment in the network. This creates a positive ripple effect in many other areas, including power distribution and switchgear, power conversion and air conditioning cooling. High reliability for critical-care services: Healthcare facilities have zero tolerance for network instability. LAN stability can be measured in the percentage of time that the network is up and running throughout a year. A legacy copper-based LAN generally offers 99.9 percent availability per year, which means 8.7 hours of downtime. This is unacceptable for health care providers. Typical optical LAN has a tested availability of 99.999% per year or 5 minutes of downtime annually. Designed for patient care: Passive optical LAN architectures provide tremendous improvements in the design of healthcare facilities. A fiber-based LAN can span 12.5 miles (copper LANs only stretch 300 feet). The additional distance with fiber eliminates mid-span switching electronics located in telecom rooms, which means facilities can reduce or even eliminate overly complex telecom rooms. As a result, without any increase in square footage, healthcare facilities can easily accommodate more patient care rooms. Security for the modern healthcare environment: With strict HIPAA requirements, LAN security is a top industry priority. LAN traffic is more secure on passive optical LAN than on copper-based networks. Fiber is not susceptible to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI), Radio …
The post Passive Optical LAN is the Perfect Fit for Healthcare Facilities appeared first on Association for Passive Optical LAN.