Licensed wireless services give Vista Primary Care nationwide reach
Vista Primary Care aims to bring its 21st-century diagnostic and
preventive health services to people across Ireland, and it's
relying on a licensed wireless network to help fulfil its vision.
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A single 4D scan from Vista may
contain 8,000 images totalling 14GB.
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In Ireland, the future of healthcare probably looks a lot
like Vista Primary Care. Kildare-based Vista is Ireland's first
primary-care campus, located just meters from Naas General
Hospital. Its chief tenant is K-Doc, a group of general
practitioners serving more than 240,000 patients. The EUR25 million
centre boasts the kind of scanning and diagnostic equipment which
was previously only available in a hospital setting, and which
includes one of the world's few 4D CT scanners.
Vista offers ophthalmology, orthopaedic, pharmacy and medical
imaging services, including diagnostic services like general X-ray,
ultrasound, MRI and CT. Darragh Kettle, Commercial Manager for
Vista, is emphatic about the importance of medical imaging to the
venture.
"Medical imaging is a principal component of the whole project,"
Darragh said. "But it's also the highest risk. A key to our success
is our ability to get images to any point in the country, and that
was going to be difficult using traditional broadband."
Diagnostic imagery produced by Vista is analysed by radiologists
and other specialists who then produce reports, including selected
images, which can be viewed by the referring physicians or
hospitals over a secure web interface. The radiologists' report
"packages" are not bandwidth intensive, but the original diagnostic
images are -- a single 4D scan may contain 8,000 images totalling
14GB. If the radiologists viewing the original images are not based
at Vista, all files need to be transmitted to them, wherever they
may be in Ireland.
This is the heavy-duty telecommunications challenge Vista brought
to the market. The solution was a high-bandwidth, licensed wireless
network.
High-performance medical imaging demands high bandwidth
After considering fibre and other fixed line options, Darragh said
Vista quickly opted for a licensed wireless network delivered as a
managed service by AirSpeed Telecom.
Licensed wireless networks use microwave radio technology to
deliver highly secure, reliable connectivity at extremely high
bandwidth. In Ireland, this means connectivity can be delivered
anywhere in the country, including rural regions not currently
served by broadband or connected by fibre.
Darragh notes that although Vista looked at fixed line and fibre,
it quickly stopped exploring avenues other than licensed wireless
because of the technology's obvious good fit with Vista's needs.
The licensed wireless network not only lets Vista reach any
hospital within the M50 without a cable and without relying on any
other third-party technology or provider, it also empowers the
organisation to move large amounts of data to virtually any
location across Ireland.
A dedicated service delivers for Vista:
- Rapid rollout: Following the first consultation, the
Vista network was brought live within 7 days with a 10Mbps link
scalable to 155Mbps. This is uncontended symmetrical bandwidth
from the Naas campus, via a high site on Kippure Mountain, direct
to AirSpeed's centre in Citywest.
- Proactive, managed service: The managed service model
allows Vista to perform its work with confidence: constant
monitoring of the network means that any issues can be spotted
and addressed quickly, before Vista ever feels any impact. "We've
not had one minute of downtime," Darragh notes.
- Fast scalability, nationwide reach: The rapidly
deployable and scalable licensed wireless network infrastructure
offers important flexibility as Vista grows its business and
requires links to more clinicians and hospitals across
Ireland.
Darragh says licensed wireless is undoubtedly the right
technology for Vista, from both a usability and a security point of
view.
"Any network is only as secure as your encryption software and
applications -- I think security is less to do with the carrier or
the network technology than with the generator and processor of the
data," he says. "We're very happy to work with this technology.
Also the whole notion of managed and licensed is desirable, because
there is a lot of unlicensed, unmanaged wireless out there."
The rapid, hassle-free setup also allowed Vista to move quickly
with services that will let it recoup its large investment in
leading-edge medical technology.
"Our CT scanner alone (Aquilion ONE by Toshiba) cost EUR2.30
million and we would never be able to maximise that technology
without licensed wireless, because other available technologies
can't deal with those file sizes," Darragh says. "We can't afford
to drip feed images -- if a patient is critically ill, images have
to be transmitted right away. Technically, fibre can do this level
of data transmission, but we didn't have fibre here in Naas, the
cost of bringing it here was prohibitive, and the time factor was
just too long. Licensed wireless is the right technology for what
we do."
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