ITN has been working with several healthcare related firms over the past few years with great success.  ITN has installed MERU Networks wireless equipment in many different healthcare facilities ranging from a small doctor office to a regional hospital serving multiple floors and hundreds of users & patients.  One of our first clinics to adopt the MERU Wireless product had cycled through other brands such as Cisco and Aruba with poor results.  These products had failed to perform at the level required for accuracy of data input, proper coverage, interference, and most important to the doctors at this clinic, ease and consistency of connection.  It’s unfortunate that they purchased inferior solutions twice but the good news is that this clinic was still willing and interested to depend on wireless for their architecture.  Four years later, the MERU Networks system in this clinic is still performing flawlessly.  With Meru, healthcare organizations can ensure that physicians and caregivers stay continuously connected throughout the hospital, with toll-quality voice and seamless roaming. Meru supports critical mobile applications at the point of care, enabling hospitals to confidently deploy innovative solutions for mobile access to patient records, patient monitoring, dosage verification, voice, and asset tracking. Easy to deploy and simple to manage, they deliver the industry’s best user experience with low total cost of ownership.

In the past, other posts have touched on the different preparation points if you plan to migrate to VOIP.  The structured cabling team at ITN was recently given an opportunity to design and quote an emergency structured cabling solution for a client.  Most folks don’t re-wire their office on an emergency basis so you might wonder what the rush was all about.  It turns out that another vendor sold this client a ShoreTel VOIP telephone system.  While the ShoreTel VOIP system isn’t as strong as the AVAYA IP Office solution, no VOIP system should be installed onto a Category 3 infrastructure with subpar Ethernet switching.  Sadly the ShoreTel vendor may have seemed eager to “make a sale” and either never had the best interest of the client in mind or simply did not possess the basic knowledge concerning VOIP and Ethernet switching on a Category 3 cable infrastructure.  ITN was asked to provide pricing on replacing the 15 year old Category 3 infrastructure with Cat 5e so that the new ShoreTel phone system would work properly.  There is a great deal more preparation that goes into providing VOIP for business clients than just “selling a box and some phones”.