Taking care of those who take care of us

„At Dobrzyńska, we take good care of you and your health needs”. That’s the principle that guides the daily operations of doctors and employees of the eponymous medical center. The impressive Neo-Renaissance façade invites patients to come in, offering the services of family physicians, thirty specialist clinics, a therapeutic rehabilitation center for children and adults, and most recently, a mental health outpatient clinic.

Without a doubt, The Regional Health Care Center “Dobrzyńska” can be considered a unique place on the medical map of Lower Silesia, the south-western part of Poland which borders with Germany and Czechia. The center, located in a historic building, brings together more than one hundred leading doctors coming from many different fields of medicine. Each month, the center treats approximately thirty two thousand patients, with every tenth being a children. Recently, “Dobrzyńska” has also started providing free-of-charge health services for the citizens of Ukraine who are fleeing the war.

When you’re running an IT department in the largest outpatient treatment facility in the province, your needs in the area of network connectivity and supporting modern medical devices are quite significant and, as it often happens, rather disproportionate to the budget. To make matters worse, no one was ready for what the infamous 2020 was about to bring…

„The beginning of the pandemic was a particularly rough patch for us, none of us could even begin to imagine treating patients remotely”, says Barbara Bulerska, the Head of IT Support for Medical Processes and Services. “Essentially, we had to switch to a different mode of operation overnight and our network infrastructure definitely wasn’t ready for that. We needed a reliable, flexible and easily manageable wireless solution to connect our doctors with their patients. And since we had never used Wi-Fi network in our facility, that task seemed even more difficult”.

But every cloud has a silver lining. As luck would have it, among the patients of “Dobrzyńska” around that time was Adam Minowski, Systems Engineer at Extreme Networks Poland. Seeing the center’s needs and pain points following the pandemic, Adam came forward with the initiative to support the local IT team by donating some networking equipment and solutions. Sitting well with the Extreme’s Day of Giving corporate social responsibility program, the idea quickly found supporters within the company.

„Barbara and her team needed a reliable and easy to deploy Wi-Fi network to ensure an efficient operation of the telehealth and video-based online health services. Time was of the essence here, because each day of delay meant increasing difficulty accessing medical services for the patients”, Adam Minowski explains. “Looking at the bigger picture, we also wanted our solution to be scalable to support both the current and future needs in terms of Wi-Fi coverage, capacity and bandwidth”.

Adam’s initiative was met with a lot of enthusiasm and support from the rest of the team. Initially, Extreme provided two access points to ensure connectivity for the mental health outpatient clinic. The ability to provide remote therapy services at such a difficult time was of critical importance.

Today, the Wi-Fi consists of twelve AP305C access points and this number’s growing year after year. The wireless network based on the Extreme devices covers the center’s registration desk and the entire second floor, including a number of specialist clinics such as ophthalmology or diabetology. Most importantly, the doctors can now treat their patients remotely using Android-based devices. The network also supports video call services, so the physicians can connect with e.g. diabetic patients with reduced mobility to show them how to take proper care of the their wounds.

The development of the center’s new Wi-Fi network is gradual in nature. The next part of the plan is to connect medical computer workstations and imaging devices, including the new, cutting-edge ultrasound for scanning heart and abdominal cavity. The IT team is also considering setting up a couple of information kiosks to encourage visitors to create an online patient account. These Wi-Fi connected kiosks could be moved around the center, depending on the ongoing needs.

To manage their wireless network efficiently and effortlessly, the IT team at “Dobrzyńska” has also been granted an access to the ExtremeCloud IQ platform.

“As for now, our network may not be very large, but having access to such detailed analytical data in real time definitely comes in handy and its usefulness will only increase over time, along with the progressing development of our infrastructure”, says Barbara Bulerska. “You may say the project is still in the beta-phase, but we already feel some tangible benefits. We are very grateful to the entire Extreme team in Poland for their willingness to help us", the Head of IT Support sums up.

The people of Extreme Networks are actively involved in a variety of charity and community initiatives. When we were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the company in May 2021, we decided we’d rather give back rather than receive birthday gifts. A new tradition was born – from then on, the 10th of May marks the annual Day of Giving, a symbolic event that brings Extreme employees around the world together to support a wide range of causes.