Supporting Healthcare IT Networks as Facilities Ramp Up COVID-19 Responses

Hospitals and clinics are racing to stay ahead of COVID-19.  Events are changing every day, and healthcare facilities around the world are working to ensure that they can meet the needs of every person who needs medical care.  Systems are being rapidly redesigned to respond to the pandemic, as well as to medical diagnoses and injuries not related to coronavirus. Many clinics and hospitals are ramping up telehealth services for all patients, and offering video consultations with a physician to determine if someone is displaying COVID-19 symptoms and needs to be tested.  Many testing sites, including drive-through locations, will not perform the test without a note from a physician. These video conferences are vital to getting that permission.

With events moving so quickly, IT is left little time to deploy any necessary infrastructure or network changes, but it is now more than ever that time is needed.  Wireless and wired networks in healthcare facilities are often the backbone of mission-critical medical resources. This includes telehealth services, devices like smart beds and tools that monitor vitals, as well as health IT services like electronic medical records (EMRs).  In addition, many healthcare professionals use tablets or other mobile devices to check-in on patients, review health histories, and coordinate care. All of these resources depend on a strong and reliable wireless network. How is this network optimized during a disaster response situation like COVID-19?  With automation and remote visibility.

Automation

With an automated analytics solution monitoring the entire network, IT can focus their efforts on other critical activities required to alleviate the strain caused by COVID-19.  With AI-support, IT can offload network monitoring and analysis, trusting that the network is optimized unless otherwise notified. Wyebot’s award-winning, patented Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP) improves network performance, reliability, and security with its AI-based automation.  WIP provides proactive, 24/7 detection, notification, and mitigation of all existing and potential issues. Once plugged in, it only takes it minutes to start automatically analyzing the network, learning what behavior is normal and what is abnormal. Anything suspicious – everything from a potential hacker, to an open port, to a degrading piece of hardware – is proactively recognized and reported, along with actionable intelligence for a quick resolution.  This enables IT to resolve the issue before anyone is affected.  

WIP works 24/7/365, so if your IT team isn’t large enough to enable around-the-clock analysis, that’s okay.  You don’t need to worry about something happening in the middle of the night. WIP is always on, providing constant analytics and network supervision.

Remote Visibility

In healthcare facilities, even small, mobile clinics, there can be anywhere from dozens to thousands of devices connecting to the network.  There’s always the chance that something could go wrong with one of these critical medical devices. In addition, wireless networks also support any technology that patients and visitors bring with them.  These devices can cause network interference or take up too much bandwidth, causing the slow performance of connected medical devices.  

With complete network visibility, IT can easily spot performance and security issues, which is crucial for the quick resolution of these issues.  With remote visibility, IT doesn’t have to be on-premise to identify and troubleshoot issues. This is ideal for any situation where IT can’t travel, as well as situations where travel would take a long time, delaying the time to resolution.  

WIP provides complete remote visibility into the entire network ecosystem, remote network testing, and historical analytics.

• Remote Visibility: WIP’s patented fingerprinting, behavioral profiling, and device pattern recognition identify all devices connected to the network.  WIP provides instant, visual updates of the network on its dashboard – a dashboard that can be accessed from any location.
• Remote Network Test Suite: the Test Suite runs remote tests on a scheduled or manual basis over Wired and Wireless networks.  WIP sends automatic alerts if any test fails so that resolutions can be implemented immediately.
• Historical Analytics: Study network events in depth, even if the exact conditions in question no longer exist.  This is crucial for troubleshooting issues that occured during off-hours, as well as reviewing network health and performance over the last week or month.  One of the best ways to optimize a network is to know how user activity changed over time, and historical analytics are the best and most efficient method of obtaining the necessary data.  Whether optimizing a network in the short-term to handle COVID-19 cases, or designing a future network to be in better shape for a pandemic or similar emergency, historical data is invaluable.

As the crisis ramps up, IT doesn’t have the time or the resources to hire more people.  In order to support new and complex environments, these teams need the support of AI-driven WiFi automation.  Work with Wyebot today to bring WIP to your facility.