SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that Children’s of Alabama, ranked among the best pediatric medical centers in the nation by US News & World Report, is deploying an Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform)-based network to further the transformation of its healthcare services. Using Aruba wireless, switching, management and security solutions, Children’s of Alabama is implementing critical new capabilities that improve patient experiences, while streamlining operations and reducing costs.

Children’s of Alabama provided care for children from every county in Alabama, 42 other states, and seven foreign countries last year, representing more than 677,000 outpatient visits and 15,000+ inpatient admissions. One of the largest pediatric facilities in the country, Children’s operates a main campus of three million square feet, as well as 14 remote clinics, and is the primary site for the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s pediatric medicine, surgery, psychiatry, research and residency programs.

Children’s had previously used Cisco networking equipment but as the provider began evolving its patient care, moving to Epic for electronic health records (EHR), and adding services such as telemedicine and video-intensive care, remote operations for poison control and call centers, and location services and wayfinding for patient-facing applications, the IT team realized it needed a more secure and cost-effective solution that could grow with its needs. In addition, with more IoT, specialty medical, and mobile devices connecting to its network, Children’s needed to determine how to both secure these devices and leverage their data to enable quicker decision-making, provide better care and services to patients, and adapt to the changing COVID-19 pandemic environment.
“Things move so much more quickly now, and our existing architecture really wasn’t keeping up,” said Children’s of Alabama CIO, Bob Sarnecki. “We had Wi-Fi capability, but that’s not the same as really delivering a solid mobile experience for things like video visits or for securely connecting the approximately 100,000 IoT devices on our network such as workstations, IV pumps, beds and HVAC controls.”

According to Sarnecki, the IT team had also embarked on an open architecture journey to allow staff to bring in their own devices – so long as they could be connected to the network securely – but this was becoming an increasingly difficult management challenge with their existing network. The COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues, causing Children’s to accelerate initiatives for delivering healthcare services remotely.

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