Healthcare’s transition into a digital world

As the world of healthcare continues its digital transformation, patient data is transitioning from paper to electronic medical records, telemedicine lets doctors see patients over the Internet, and hospitals, urgent care facilities, and other medical offices. One technology that is quite crucial is the reliance on a Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) to drive healthcare’s transition into a digitally based, connected world.

While the reports of a vaccine ging closer not just in the UAE but across the globe becoming an encouraging sign, it is no surprise that the healthcare sector continues to be stretched when it comes to resources. Technology continues to play a strong role to enabling this crucial sector managing its resources efficiently.

As the world of healthcare continues its digital transformation, patient data is transitioning from paper to electronic medical records, telemedicine lets doctors see patients over the Internet, and hospitals, urgent care facilities, and other medical offices. As more patients rely on access to these partner practices, urgent care facilities, off-site medical centre’s as well as access to medical records so that these can be shared or transferred, a strong network helps deliver all these and more.

One technology that is quite crucial is the reliance on a Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) to drive healthcare’s transition into a digitally based, connected world.

Better network control

With SD-WAN, organizations can segment and support different traffic at varying levels, such as administrative email or patient monitoring devices. SD-WAN also helps assure uptime for users, a must when it comes to needing round-the-clock access to information and meeting government (and international) regulations and compliance. SD-WANs have a centralized application-based policy controller that allows organizations to set policies and prioritize certain application traffic to ensure it has certain service levels.

SD-WAN helps to manage the overall bandwidth demands, increasing response time, raising productivity as well as more effectively apply tighter controls and protect the data exchanges.

The benefits of deploying the right SD-WAN are quite substantial.

It enables faster onboarding of new clinics and automating manual operations with centralised management
It delivers reliable real-time voice and video communications and fast transmission of medical records and images, even over broadband
In a world of data and security, it enhances security and HIPAA compliance with dynamic application routing, based on centrally defined policies

So, what can you do to ensure that your SD-WAN is giving you the best support:

Depending on the size of the operations, make sure your SD-WAN is Service provider grade and can be customised to provide end-to-end visibility, application-aware routing, secure traffic segmentation and seamless cloud integration
Make sure it is cloud optimised. This will ensure that it provides a direct connection for data to the cloud from all locations, eliminating the need to go via a central data center before going to cloud applications.
Make sure the information is secure and outcome-driven –assures application performance regardless of the transport mechanism
It offers more bandwidth at a lower cost: –eliminate over-dependence on expensive multi-protocol label switching private lines in favour of other, more efficient transport methods, including high-speed broadband and cellular LTE.