|
July 20, 2005 Lake Success, NY -- Exempla Healthcare, an operator of hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic facilities in Denver, Wheat Ridge, and Lafayette, Colorado, has selected Canon's Canobeam DT-120 optical wireless data transmission system as a means of maintaining reliable data security.
"As with all medical organizations, we operate under the guidelines of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which includes federal guidelines for the secure transmission of medical information," comments Exempla Healthcare network analyst David McKnight. "HIPAA requires that we make all reasonable efforts to keep all patient information private, which means that if we're sending data between sites we have to make that sure it's secure. Microwave and other RF network links are extremely easy to intercept, and current security and encryption methods for those technologies are not difficult to break. But Canobeam, being line-of-sight optical wireless, minimizes these concerns."
The hospitals organization installed the Canobeam DT-120 system to provide a secure network link between Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette, and a leased facility approximately a quarter mile away, where the organization is developing medical information software. Data transmitted between the buildings includes large-size medical-imaging files.
"There's a road between those buildings, which eliminates the possibility of trenching fiber," continues McKnight. "We own the property right up to the road, but the road and the property on the other side aren't ours, and we don't have right-of-way. Also, we needed to interconnect the two sites quickly, which did not allow time for a conventional WAN to fall in place in time, considering the amount of bandwidth we needed. It was, of course, feasible to use a couple of T1 circuits, but that was not adequate for our timetable and the type of data that was going across. Given that there was a great deal of development going on in our software facility - and that there were no local back-up servers there - we needed bandwidth with which we could perform not only the type of data transfer and imaging transfer we do, but also back-ups across the wire in a reasonable amount of time. All of this necessitated the kind of bandwidth that we get from Canobeam."
Canon says its Canobeam DT-120 data-transmission system provides reliable wireless communication via free space optics (FSO) at distances of from 100 m to 2 km, at data speeds of from 25 Mbit/sec to 156 Mbit/sec. According to the company, because the system's FSO technology uses a line-of-sight beam of light that can't be intercepted, it enables full data security. Also, according to the company, the system's "Auto Tracking" function automatically adjusts the light beam to compensate for vibrations in the installation base due to wind, building or traffic vibrations, and other environmental factors, thereby maintaining an optimum FSO connection. The system also includes the company's DT-MNG-100 Management Board, built-in as a standard feature. The board enables users to monitor the status of Canobeam transceivers via SNMP or Telnet; diagnostic logs can be stored in a PC via FTP.
"I've already been considering other possible uses for our Canobeam within Exempla Healthcare," concludes McKnight. "One example would be during a natural disaster or other extreme condition in our immediate area that would require access to medical information. Canobeam gives us a line-of-sight system that's powerful enough to use at a moderate distance from the hospital, which is a fairly high building. We could re-mount the Canobeam to a truck, align it, and create an instant high-bandwidth link to a mobile field site."
|
Regional Editions 
| View all PennWell sites | View all PennWell events | Industry Links
Add RSS Feed
