Korean Asan Medical Center Mends Its Wireless Communications Network

Colubris Networks has announced that Asan Medical Center (AMC), the largest hospital in Korea, has selected Colubris for the implementation of a new wireless LAN designed to support Voice over Wi-Fi (VoFi) and other innovative healthcare applications.Asan Medical Center, which is based in Seoul and has seven regional hospitals throughout Korea, employs more than 9,000 staff to deliver healthcare services to more than 10,000 patients each day. AMC is currently constructing a new building at its main campus to expand its capacity by 700 beds. As part of this expansion, the hospital plans to upgrade its wireless LAN infrastructure so it can deploy new, productivity-boosting applications, such as VoFi. The hospital had been using Cisco wireless LANs for access to electronic medical records, but realized the Cisco solution could not scale to adequately handle new, performance-sensitive applications. After an extensive evaluation of major WLAN vendors, including Cisco and Aruba, AMC selected Colubris to implement a new wireless network throughout the campus, citing Colubris' 802.11n readiness, quality of service for VoFi, seamless roaming capabilities and higher throughput as key differentiators.

"Like many medical institutions, we use a pager system for internal communications, which is inconvenient and unreliable," said Mr. Cheon-Gweon Kim, communication unit manager at Asan Medical Center. "We selected Colubris to replace our existing wireless LAN so we could support a new Voice over Wi-Fi system to improve staff communications. We will also be using Colubris to support mobile access to electronic medical records and we plan to develop a range of new applications for healthcare, staff communication and patient/visitor services."

AMC will initially deploy 270 Colubris MAP-330 access points in the new building, then replace over 200 existing Cisco LWAP access points by year-end. Three MSC-5500 controllers will be installed to deliver centralized network control and seamless roaming throughout the AMC hospital complex. In the future, AMC will extend the wireless LAN to provide coverage to a research center, hospital annex and outdoor facilities. AMC is also using Colubris' Network Management System, a comprehensive wireless LAN management system designed to centrally manage large enterprise WLANs, and RF Manager, a complete wireless intrusion detection and prevention system that ensures the highest level of privacy and security.

"Enabling rapid, secure and convenient communications between healthcare professionals at an institution as large as AMC is vital to delivering high quality patient care," said Rob Scott, president and CEO of Colubris. "We're delighted Asan Medical Center selected Colubris for our demonstrated ability to deliver superior performance, reliability and scalability, giving them the confidence to deploy innovative mobility solutions and migrate seamlessly to the leading 802.11n wireless network."