Withybush Hospital in south-west Wales has upgraded its IT network infrastructure supported by £300,000 worth of investment from the Welsh Assembly Government’s Informing Healthcare Programme.
Robin Jones, IM&T manager for hospital’s trust, Pembrokeshire & Derwen NHS Trust, said the new infrastructure had realised a 100-fold bandwidth improvement in some parts of the hospital’s network, eliminated single points of failure and provided a platform for extremely efficient management and administration.
The procurement began in January and work started on the new network in March. The hospital, in Haverfordwest, is also introducing a picture archiving and communications system (PACS) which could not have operated without the new network.
“The biggest benefit is that large, sensitive files such as x-rays, picture archives and other patient data can now be manipulated and transmitted far more easily and quickly, enabling our medical professionals to provide a higher standard of patient care. Moving forward, this investment will give us a platform for the next 10 years and beyond as we embrace the Welsh Assembly’s vision for the single patient record,” said Robin Jones.
Under the investment agreement, the Informing Healthcare Programme met the capital costs of the network and the trust is bearing the revenue costs.
The work was done by independent IT integration specialists, Matrix Communications who installed and integrated a highly resilient, high-throughput core based on the Foundry Networks FastIron 1500 modular switch, connected to other parts of the LAN with interfaces managing speeds between 1 and 10Gbps.
Matrix says Juniper firewalls have also been deployed to provide perimeter protection of all trust sites connected to the WAN. Management and monitoring capabilities are provided by Foundry’s ASIC based sFlow tool, which gives administrators complete visibility of the network without degrading performance. Matrix’s contract with the trust also includes a five-year maintenance and support agreement.