Problems with wireless connectivity in big healthcare environments weren’t an uncommon sight, and we didn’t even need the pandemic to realize it. However, Wi-Fi 6E seems like a miraculous cure for some of the critical pain points of IT healthcare professionals. Let’s examine why!
To say that hospital campuses are complex and dynamic environments, would be an utter understatement. Multiple devices per person, mobile staff and guest end devices, noise from neighboring technologies – you name it.
The number of devices and the sheer amount of data they consume continues to grow, creating an inevitable fight for resources and throttling application performance. Hospitals are just perfect examples of congested, high traffic, constantly changing environments.
The result? Critical healthcare devices/applications not fully functioning, healthcare brands delivering subpar user experiences, IT staff buried in the tasks at hand so deep they’re unable to focus on innovation. A pretty poor prognosis, but fortunately enough there is a cure and its name is Wi-Fi 6E.
Wi-Fi 6E – just what the doctor ordered
The main benefit of Wi-Fi 6E is how it addresses high-density RF environments with a significant number of devices/users in one area. Since we’ve already covered the basic functionalities of the new Wi-Fi standard in the previous entry, let’s just focus on how it can specifically solve some of the critical pain points for IT healthcare professionals.
- Improved performance & advancing voice over Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6E takes advantage of the new 6 GHz band that will initially only serve the highest-performance, next-generation client device to create a cleaner RF environment. By offloading congestion in 2.4 GHz/5 GHz bands with 6E-capable hardware being created, it helps to eliminate RF contention for a more efficient wireless experience for all devices and users. This means easier transfer of video, medical imaging, analytics, and documents with better support of videoconferencing and voice calls. It also means hospital administrators and physicians won’t have to contend with slow download times or inhibited communications.
- Improved care through better efficiency. Connected devices often ‘wake up’ to share data and keep connection with the network. This can cause battery life and energy to die prematurely – certainly not ideal in mission critical (if not life critical!) settings. Wi-Fi 6E employs Target Wake Time (TWT) to boost device life. As clinicians increasingly rely on devices, every bit of battery life counts and unexpected shutdowns only interrupt patient care and/or operational efficiency.
- Faster and more immune networks. Wi-Fi 6E wireless access points could prove to deliver 2.5x faster throughput compared to equivalent Wi-Fi 6 APs. With greater throughput equals faster transmission speeds for large data files such as MRI, radiography, and ultrasounds – not to mention better quality telemedicine sessions. Wi-Fi 6E also supports new WPA3 encryption and authentication protocol, providing stronger security to any client or device.
In other words: with more capacity, improved efficiency, and fortified security, Wi-Fi 6E will empower healthcare IT leaders to accelerate digital transformation, and better accommodate the influx of IoT and other client devices coming onto the network.
Wi-Fi 6E and Extreme Networks
As a leader in wired and wireless networking, Extreme Networks understands the enormous opportunity Wi-Fi 6E presents for technology leaders and the enterprise environments they’re tasked with supporting. As such, Extreme was the first Wi-Fi manufacturer in the industry to ship enterprise grade Wi-Fi 6E solution. Extreme’s AP4000 is the most advanced Wi-Fi 6E solution in the market, with industry-leading cloud management and ability to operate on 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, AND the new 6 GHz band.
Designed for high-density environments such as healthcare facilities and large campus hospitals, Extreme’s lead customers, including large healthcare providers, are rolling out Wi-Fi 6E technology. Take Novant Health, which has partnered with Extreme to roll out Wi-Fi 6E for expanded network capacity and improved performance for mission critical healthcare applications and medical devices.
