Hospitals eye optical
networks
Broadband services speed CT scans for remote
readings
By Kathy
Kincade
Telephone, cable, and power companies have laid miles of dark (so far unused)
optical fiber across the U.S. in the hope that they would eventually get
customers to lease time and space on them. Some U.S. healthcare operations are
already tapping into such fibers, creating new high-bandwidth capabilities for
enterprise image sharing.
Marconi Communications plans to implement private fiber-optic cable for
regional hospital groups that will allow them to transmit data, images, and
voice over a common connection. The company is targeting hospitals in major
metropolitan areas, hoping to interest them in leasing fiber, with Marconi
implementing and managing the networks.
“This is certainly a trend, and a lot of hospitals are looking at doing
it,” said Tom Pacenta, Marconi’s industry manager for healthcare
marketing. “Say a hospital is looking at setting up its own data center. We
set them up as their own competitive local exchange carrier and Marconi provides
the optical switching gear. That makes sense because it gives them unlimited
bandwidth and creates their own private network.”
Similarly, Lockheed Martin has licensed fiber-optic wavelength division
multiplexer (WDM) technology from healthcare startup FiberRx to deploy in
hospitals and medical facilities. The FiberRx network uses a single fiber-optic
cable to communicate with existing networks and systems in a hospital or medical
center. Data from multiple sources can be combined in a single network, making
medical network architectures that consist of hubs, switches, and routers
obsolete.
Yipes Communications, an optical networking startup in San Francisco, is
working with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) to enable the transmission
of high-bandwidth images among PAMF’s main campus, the Internet, and
satellite clinics in the area. Yipes’ optical IP network is private but
allows a direct, high-capacity connection to the Internet.
The gigabit-capacity LAN-to-LAN (local area network) and LAN-to-Internet
networks also provide fully scalable bandwidth on demand, from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps
in 1-Mbps increments, using standard Ethernet interfaces for both local- and
wide-area network connections.
“The idea of being able to call up and say, ‘We need 5 megabytes to
the Internet now’ and within minutes you’ve got it, is great,”
said Rob Lawrence, senior systems engineer with PAMF. “Our long-term goal
is to use Yipes for a virtual LAN that connects at least five of our nine remote
sites and replaces our existing T1 connections.”
