Xirrus® Wi-Fi Arrays™ to Improve Patient Care and Hospital Services at Award-Winning Hospital
Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announced today that Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool, one of Western Europe’s biggest and busiest children’s hospital, has selected Xirrus’ Wi-Fi Arrays to be deployed throughout the entire campus. Doctors, nurses, staff, students, patients, and guests will use Wi-Fi-enabled laptop and handheld computers to deliver a host of wireless applications, such as electronic prescribing, RFID tagging, and VoWi-Fi to improve patient care and overall efficiency of the hospital’s services.
“We had an immediate requirement to enable ubiquitous access to a range of applications throughout the hospital site,” said Dave Murphy, Assistant Director of Information and Communication Technology at Alder Hey. “To make this a reality, we required a Wi-Fi architecture that was quick and easy to deploy without major disruptions to our hospital’s existing network and services. Also, due to limited space, it was important that the solution did not require a great deal of IT closet space for switches and controllers. Xirrus very quickly convinced us that their solution was capable of fulfilling these requirements and more—delivering the user density, bandwidth, coverage, and reliability needed to support our physician and patient applications, and give us the ability to easily upgrade to 802.11n without undue disruption or drain on IT resources.”
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest specialist children’s healthcare providers in Western Europe. It has a national and international reputation as a centre of excellence for children with cancer, heart, spinal and brain disease and is one of a small number of children’s hospitals in the UK providing a comprehensive range of services from those based in the community to supra-regional specialties for children and young people. It sees and treats more than 200,000 children each year and is England’s first paediatric health promoting hospital accredited by the World Health Organisation.
“We are very impressed with the Xirrus Wi-Fi architecture, especially when compared to the traditional centralized architectures we looked at,” continued Murphy. “The Xirrus Wi-Fi solution will require 194 cable drops to cover the entire campus, while a centralized system from other vendors would have required well over 1,000 cable drops, yet still not have delivered the bandwidth, user density, RF management and shaping, or full switch-level control for our voice, video, and data traffic. By selecting Xirrus, we reduced overall costs due to 800 less cable runs, 800 less switch ports, and 800 less devices to install, manage, and upgrade to 802.11n.”
“Alder Hey was looking for 100% pervasive Wi-Fi coverage across their campus, including the lobbies and outside areas,” said Mark Lowe, Sale Manager of Pinacl Solutions. “Having this ubiquitous coverage was key in allowing doctors and nurses to have full network access whether at the patient’s bedside, in wards, or in the waiting areas. With plans for RFID and voice over Wi-Fi on the horizon, having a high capacity, high bandwidth, scalable Wi-Fi infrastructure was critical to Alder Hey’s IT staff—only Xirrus is capable of providing a Wi-Fi network with the same quality user experience as a wired network.”
“Pinacl Solutions was assigned to find and build a world-class Wi-Fi network that would give Alder Hey wired-like performance for wireless applications like electronic prescribing,” said Chris Allen, Regional Manager at Xirrus. “Using the Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays allowed Pinacl to deliver more with less—more bandwidth, coverage, and bandwidth with less devices, cables, and switch ports. No other Wi-Fi vendor comes close.”
Click here for more information on the deployment at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
About Alder Hey Children’s Hospital
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is one of the biggest and busiest children’s hospitals in Europe seeing and treating more than 200,000 children each year and employing over 2,700 staff. It is the birthplace of modern pediatric anesthesia, neonatal surgery, and children’s cardiac surgery. The hospital is one of the few with a University Institute of Child Health and trains over 600 medical students along with hosting national postgraduate medical examinations (MRCPCH). There are 20 specialist services, which include bone marrow transplant, burns, cleft lip and palate, cancer, renal replacement and spinal injuries. The supra-regional services include cardiology and craniofacial surgery. For more information, please visit http://www.alderhey.com.
About Pinacl Solutions
As leaders in innovative communication solutions, Pinacl uses industry-leading products and services to design and implement bespoke solutions for voice, video, and data networks. Our strategic partnerships with key manufacturers such as Xirrus®, Cisco®, Polycom®, Tandberg®, Brand-Rex®, and Krone® ensure that we provide the optimum solution for our clients, utilizing strong technical knowledge, unrivalled sector presence, and an impressive scope of business critical services including consultancy, project management, infrastructure design and commission, application and platform support, maintenance, and enhanced managed services. For more information, please visit http://www.pinaclsolutions.com.
Xirrus Press Contact
John Merrill
E-mail: john.merrill@xirrus.com
Phone: +1.805.262.1644
About Xirrus
Xirrus, the only Wi-Fi “Power-Play”, manufacturers the Wi-Fi Array® architecture that displaces both overlay Wi-Fi offerings and switched Ethernet to the desktop. The Wi-Fi Array integrates 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 802.11abg+n radios coupled to a high-gain directional antenna system into a single device along with an onboard multi-gigabit switch, Wi-Fi controller, firewall, dedicated Wi-Fi threat sensor, and an embedded spectrum analyzer. The Wi-Fi Array provides more than enough bandwidth, security, and control to replace switched Ethernet to the desktop as the primary network connection. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array delivers the most coverage, bandwidth, throughput, and user density on a per device and per system basis than anything else available on the market today – resulting in a solution that uses 75% fewer devices, cabling, switch ports, power, space, and installation time compared with any other offering.
Xirrus is a privately-held company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. For more information, please visit www.xirrus.com.
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