Catholic Health System Chooses Alcatel as Its Internetworking Partner.Business Editors CALABASAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 25, 2000 Alcatel's Omni-family of Internetworking Products Assist Catholic Health System in Providing Increased Bandwidth and Connectivity Alcatel today announced that The Catholic Health System, Buffalo, NY, has chosen its Omni Switch/Router and OmniStack products to provide a next-generation data network for its healthcare facilities. CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) An earlier method of addressing a hard disk by referencing all three physical elements of the drive. It was superseded by logical block addressing (see LBA). chose Alcatel for its network to help the organization merge its systems and networks to become a healthcare Integrated Delivery System integrated delivery system Integrated provider Medical practice A coordinated health care system formed by physician groups and hospitals which ↑ efficiency and ↓ redundancy in providing health care; IDSs coordinate delivery of a broad range of health (IDS). It selected Alcatel's Omni family of switches so that it could provide a foundation for new enterprise-wide applications, while maintaining its legacy infrastructure. CHS's old network consisted partly of shared Ethernet Refers to the traditional Ethernet topology in which all stations share the total bandwidth of the network. Whether connected via a common cable (10Base5, 10Base2) or a hub (10Base-T), transmission is on a first-come, first-served basis. , FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) Often pronounced "fiddy," it was a LAN and MAN access method that had its heyday in the mid-1990s. FDDI was an ANSI standard token passing network that transmitted 100 Mbps over optical fiber up to 10 kilometers. and Token Ring A local area network (LAN) access method developed by IBM. Conforming to the IEEE 802.5 standard, Token Ring uses a token ring access method and connects up to 255 nodes in a star topology at 4, 16 or 100 Mbps. and was upgraded to a fully switched 10/100/1000 Ethernet to support applications and segment systems for performance and security. CHS chose Alcatel's OmniSwitch/Router with its unique user authentication See authentication. approach and powerful virtual LAN capability to create secure zones while upgrading the performance of its applications. Alcatel's layer 2 and layer 3 OS/R provides flexibility anywhere in the network design architecture, while establishing the requirements for the high-availability needed to support large enterprise networks. CHS is using Alcatel's superior VLAN See virtual LAN. VLAN - Virtual Local Area Network technology to improve bandwidth utilization and security for high-bandwidth applications such as PACS (Picture ArChiving System) A storage and management system for high-resolution images. Typically pertaining to the medical field, images such as X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans require a greater amount of storage than other industries. and Storage Management. "CHS can put high security or high bandwidth applications like PYXIS and PACS in their own VLANs and offer access to them only where they are needed in their enterprise," said Ginger Walker, Alcatel's director of healthcare. "With CHS's upgrade to a switched network and these segmentation capabilities, it has the power and flexibility it will need to meet its application and bandwidth demands well into the future." Walker continues, "When HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191) Also known as the "Kennedy-Kassebaum Act," this U.S. law protects employees' health insurance coverage when they change or lose their jobs (Title I) and provides standards for patient health, compliance becomes necessary, CHS also has the ability to define VLANs by the user, and by adding RADIUS or LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) A protocol used to access a directory listing. LDAP support is implemented in Web browsers and e-mail programs, which can query an LDAP-compliant directory. authentication to their strategy will allow them to meet HIPPA's proposed user-based access control requirements." " Alcatel's solution gave us the flexibility to build our network while bridging critical, older technologies and systems such as FDDI for our WAN connections between our largest sites," said Doug Torre, CHS networking and technical services director. "We chose Alcatel because its products could address our network requirements in a one box solution, and because of the tremendous support that we have received from its sales and systems engineering team," said Torre. About CHS Officially launched in March, 1999, the Catholic Health System (CHS), Buffalo, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , is one of Western New York's leading providers of health care services. CHS has more than 8,000 employees and 1,700 physicians, providing care to hundreds of thousands of Western New Yorkers. The CHS network consists of five hospitals, fifteen primary care centers, nine diagnostic and treatment centers, two free standing surgery centers, thirteen long term care facilities, adult homes, home care agencies, counseling services, social service and behavioral health programs. Recognizing that health care providers must change the way they are structured and the way they work in order to meet the challenges of the turbulent environment, CHS has recently taken aggressive strides to restructure for service to the community into the new century. The launching of a new health care system brings with it enormous challenges, both in terms of cultural and technological integration. Catholic Health System looks forward to meeting those challenges. About Alcatel Alcatel builds next generation networks, delivering integrated end-to-end voice and data networking solutions to established and new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With 120,000 employees and sales of EURO 23 billion in 1999, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion