This article is co-sponsored by Aruba Networks and Tech Data.
The medical internet of things (IoT) market is expected to reach $158 billion in valuation in 2022, up from its 2017 value of $41 billion. As healthcare facilities continue to add IoT devices, medical practitioners need the ability to contextualize the data they gain from these devices for better patient outcomes.
This hyper-aware healthcare connects all devices on a facility’s network, including IoT devices to provide status information on the medical environment, occupants, needs, and cybersecurity. In order to get accurate, real-time information from IoT devices, medical practices need stronger, secured, and faster Wi-Fi connectivity. Wi-Fi 6 and the enterprise wireless LAN from Aruba Networks can deliver it.
What is Hyper-Aware Healthcare?
Hyper-aware healthcare is the process of connecting all devices on a network, including endpoints and IoT, to provide contextual data. With more data and context, healthcare facilities can become more flexible and adopt changes faster. They can also make more accurate diagnoses because they’ll have insight into the root of the symptoms, rather than making educated guesses.
Hyper-aware healthcare facilities not only get information on patients but also data regarding the hospital environment. They’ll learn about any service needs in the facility, as well as suggested improvements for safety and security. Aruba’s Edge Services Platform (ESP) helps healthcare facilities automate, unify, and protect the Edge to drive hyper-awareness.
With hyper-aware healthcare powered by Aruba, the ultimate goal is to provide better patient outcomes. Providers get better visibility into the patient’s condition, allowing them to adjust care as necessary and get real-time analysis of their efforts. If a treatment isn’t working, they can change course quickly and try something new. Plus, they’ll know when a device isn’t providing accurate readings, so they can fix it quickly.
To learn more about hyper-aware healthcare facilities and how to construct them, download our whitepaper.
The Benefits of Wi-Fi 6 for Healthcare Facilities
Aruba Networks provides secure, wireless local area networks (LANs) that are compatible with Wi-Fi 6. Here are a few of the benefits healthcare providers can expect.
More Connected Devices
Wi-Fi 6 can communicate with twice the number of devices at once that Wi-Fi 5 can, improving the overall speed that each device sees. Additionally, the new access points can broadcast the same data to multiple devices at the same time, allowing several doctors or nurses to get the same information about their patients at once. Aruba’s Wi-Fi 6E networks can also minimize channel interference.
Wi-Fi 6 also offers an IoT handling operating mode for low-power, low-bandwidth devices like sensors, automation, and medical devices. These devices can schedule check-ins with the access points in order to deliver regular reports on the data they’re collecting without consuming as much power.
Better Security
Wi-Fi 6 also improves the security of a network, which is crucial for healthcare facilities maintaining HIPAA compliance. The WPA3 protocol makes brute force password attacks more difficult, protecting patient data. Users also get government-strength traffic and session encryption for added security. Aruba has also implemented a Zero Trust Security model that includes role-based access controls and better user and guest session encryption.
Plus, Aruba Networks adds artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) to their network monitoring for faster issue detection and corrective action recommendations.
Access to Real-Time Data
Wi-Fi 6 nearly triples the maximum download speed of Wi-Fi 5, spreading those benefits to multiple devices. This means that devices can continue to get fast connectivity, even on busy networks. And faster connectivity grants access to real-time data, allowing healthcare providers to respond more quickly to the insights they get. With Aruba, customers get real-time data and centralized visibility into all of the devices on their network, including wireless, wired, and WAN architecture, from a single pane of glass.
Connectivity is Key to Extracting and Sharing Data
Strong, fast connections are critical to gathering patient data and sharing it with relevant parties to provide the best possible care. Unfortunately, providers can’t get data from IoT devices that they can’t connect to or that have been kicked off of the network by others. Healthcare facilities have more internet-connected devices than ever before, and they need an internet connection that can support them.
While a lot of recent media focus has been placed on 5G networks, 5G doesn’t work well with modern hospital construction. Low-emission glass and energy-efficient building materials tend to block the signals transmitted by 5G. However, Wi-Fi 6 does work in these conditions because it originates from inside the building, making it the perfect choice for healthcare connectivity.
Facilities need real-time data and better visibility to provide the best insights into patient care, which they can only get with Wi-Fi 6. If the IoT architecture can’t extract relevant information, then healthcare providers will miss out on important insights that improve a patient’s treatment, or they could even trigger problematic results. When dealing with literal life and death situations, healthcare providers have to use all of the tools at their disposal.
Wi-Fi 6 from Aruba Networks Drives Better Patient Outcomes
Wi-Fi 6 capabilities from Aruba Networks help healthcare facilities improve patient care because they get more devices providing real-time data for better context. This data and context are the keys to flexibility in healthcare, granting critical insights about patient needs and helping providers respond faster to changes. Additionally, Wi-Fi 6 from Aruba supports and secures more medical IoT devices, allowing facilities to become hyper-aware and improving patient outcomes.
To add Wi-Fi 6 capabilities to your healthcare facility, learn more about Aruba’s enterprise wireless LAN. Providers can choose from Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E compatibility for greater performance and capacity.