Women's Healthcare Associates of Portland, Ore., has implemented a
wireless solution from Meru Networks to give clinicians seamless
wireless access to patient records on their mobile devices as they move
from room to room in the system's six facilities.
In preparation for converting to an electronic medical records (EMR)
system this year, Women's Healthcare Associates outfitted its facilities
in Portland, Tualatin, Newberg, Sherwood and Beaverton with Meru
equipment that supports both the new high-performance IEEE 802.11n
wireless LAN standard and legacy 802.11a/b/g standards.
Gary Henderson, IT manager for Women's Healthcare Associates (WHA), said
the selection of Meru was based on the need to ensure uninterrupted
connectivity for approximately 120 physicians and other medical staff as
they move throughout the facilities providing patient care.
"Our most critical application, GE Centricity EMR, doesn't deal well
with jumping between access points," Henderson said. "If the application
loses contact with the database, the connection fails, and it's very
frustrating for the doctors to have to reconnect to the network. Unlike
other vendors we evaluated, Meru puts all of its access points on the
same channel, so that roaming between access points does not interrupt
the application. This ensures that our doctors will have seamless
mobility without the disruption of lost connections."
WHA's five clinical facilities and one administration building are each
equipped with Meru dual-radio AP320 wireless access points, which
deliver 802.11n draft 2.0 performance while simultaneously supporting
legacy 802.11a/b/g devices. Each of the AP320's two 802.11a/b/g/n radios
provides capacity of up to 300 megabits per second and can operate at
both 2.4 and 5 GHz. Redundant Meru MC3050 controllers provide
centralized control and management for the geographically dispersed
access points.
"Meru gave us an easy path to 802.11n, which we will ultimately be using
throughout the network, because a faster application is better for our
clinicians' productivity," Henderson said. "Meru equipment was also
extremely easy to deploy because the single-channel approach eliminates
the need for channel planning. And we'll be able to easily add
capabilities such as RFID and voice as we need them."
Henderson and his staff learned about Meru through Technocom, an
infrastructure solutions provider to businesses in Oregon and
Washington. Scott Reetz, Technocom account executive, said, "We were
looking at a customer's absolute requirement for zero loss of connection
as doctors walk through the clinics making diagnoses and referencing
patient records. We found that Meru could provide the seamless mobility
they needed, while at the same time being much less trouble to deploy
than other WLAN solutions."
About Women's Healthcare Associates
Women's Healthcare Associates, LLC, is an Oregon-based obstetrics,
gynecology, midwifery, and maternal fetal medicine center that offers
comprehensive, leading-edge women's services. Other services include
mammography, bone density testing, urogynecology, advanced surgical
procedures, genetic counseling, and ultrasound. The company is a
high-quality, service-oriented women's healthcare group that understands
the medical needs of women at every stage of their lives. Locations
include offices in Portland, Tualatin, Sherwood and Newberg.
About Meru Networks
Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions
that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading
innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for
business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises,
universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal
government agencies. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology
brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN
environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that
delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air quality of service with
the reliability, scalability and security necessary to deliver converged
voice and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure. Founded in
2002, Meru is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com
or call (408) 215-5300.
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