Qmoe For Healthcare Wp090861

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet for Healthcare Providers

Delivering Secure, Scalable Connectivity Across Metro Areas

As more and more healthcare providers adopt advanced life-saving digital technolo-gies and administrators seek to ensure compliance with an array of regulations, one thing is clear – demand for secure, reliable, high bandwidth connectivity continues to rise. Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet, or QMOE™, is a flexible, highly scalable solution that delivers switched, Ethernet connectivity to enable healthcare organizations to extend their local area networks, with control over routing and traffic prioritization, to meet this demand cost effectively.

QMOE is backed by Qwest’s Spirit of Service®, which provides technical expertise, responsive account management, and world-class services that exceed customers’ expectations for quality, value, and reliability.

I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H

Introduction 1

Delivering Improved Quality of Care 2

What is Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet? 3-4

Supporting Advanced Technologies 5-6

Enabling Robust First Responder Capabilities 7

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance 8

Reducing Operating Costs 9

Alcatel-Lucent Ethernet Service Switch 10

Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 Qwest All Rights Reserved. Not to be distributed or reproduced by anyone other than Qwest entities.

BCDR, EMR, CPOE, PACS, ERP, RFID, and HIPAA1 are part of an alphabet soup of acronyms for technologies and regulations that are changing the way healthcare is delivered, and helping save lives. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has been in place for several years, yet many healthcare providers re-main uncertain about what is necessary to ensure full compliance.2 This uncertainty affects systems and practices, but also affects data security and the sheer amount of data that flows between locations in a healthcare organization.

For emerging digital applications such as Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Picture Archival and Communication Systems (PACS), and Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), the implications on bandwidth demands are clearer. Consider a physician requesting a 50MB digital MRI image from a remote server. Then multiply that by the thousands of radiology examinations conducted by the healthcare orga-nization and the number of physicians who could potentially access them. Further, as more physicians appreciate how these technologies can help improve the quality of care that they deliver to patients, adoption is escalating.

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet or QMOETM offers a highly scalable, secure, and cost effective solution to meet the connectivity demands of the evolving healthcare organizations, between multiple locations, across metro areas. QMOE has also been shown to deliver greater service flexibility – an organization can obtain precisely the amount of bandwidth required – over a network that allows customers to upgrade and increase capacity quickly.

Introduction

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1(BCDR) Business Continuity Disaster Recovery; (EMR) Electronic Medical Records; (CPOE) Computerized Physician Order Entry; (PACS) Picture Archival and Communications Systems; (ERP) Enterprise Resource Planning; (RFID) Radio Frequency Identification; (HIPAA) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act2“Keeping Patients’ Details Private, Even From Kin,” New York Times, July 3, 2007, courtesy of Wikipedia


The healthcare industry faces an unprecedented array of challenges – demographic changes, regulatory requirements, and new technologies that promise to improve the quality of care. In an environment that demands lower healthcare costs, health-care IT managers focus on four operational imperatives:

Supporting Advanced TechnologiesHealthcare organizations are adopting new, highly sophisticated technologies that improve quality of care and expand service offerings by improving information flow from supplier to hospital, bedside to lab, doctor to patient.

Enabling Robust First Responder CapabilitiesHealthcare organizations realize that their role as critical first responders to emergencies and natural disasters requires robust, dependable communications networks, with advanced business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities.

Ensuring Regulatory ComplianceHealthcare administrators insist on full compliance with regulatory requirements for data creation, data integrity, data storage and retrieval, along with those related to overall security and the privacy of patient information.

Reducing Operating CostsWith ever increasing pressure on healthcare costs, IT managers know that they must achieve the first three imperatives while reducing costs and im-proving resource utilization and productivity.

Delivering Improved Quality of Care

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Qwest’s Metro Optical Ethernet service, also called QMOETM combines the sim-plicity and low cost of Ethernet with the speed and reliability of optical fiber to deliver flexible, highly scalable connectivity between hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and business offices across a metropolitan area. QMOE is available in point-to-point and multipoint service configurations, with bandwidth available in manageable incre-ments from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps. Traffic flows securely as Ethernet virtual circuits (EVCs) across a shared network infrastructure.

QMOE seamlessly extends access to medical and business applications and data across a metro area. QMOE can enable a patient’s file to be transported to mul-tiple locations to be updated by a physician, nurse, pharmacy, or laboratory, with each being served by a separate EVC to help ensure confidentiality and security. In addition to IP-centric applications, QMOE is ideal for integrating voice, video, and Internet traffic to eliminate network overlays.

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet

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Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet

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Qwest® Metro Optical EthernetQ

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Securely connects multiple facilities across a metropolitan area•

Point-to-point and multipoint service available•

Supports adoption of advanced medical technologies•

Offers unparalleled scalability to precisely match bandwidth to requirements•

Delivers high availability – up to 99.9% with the Quality of Service feature•

Enablescontroloverroutingandtrafficpriority•

Is more cost-effective solution overall than other service options•

Is backed by the Qwest Spirit of Service• ®

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Qwest offers a Quality of Service (QoS) feature with QMOETM that enables healthcare organizations to prioritize network traffic by type to help ensure avail-ability and efficiently manage network resources. Priority 1, for example, might be reserved for mission-critical data and applications that require low latency connec-tions, such as emergency paging systems. Priority 2 might be used for PACS images; Priority 3 for regular business data; and Priority 4 for communications that only require best effort service. Many healthcare organizations prefer QMOE because it enables them to control routing and traffic priority.

Qwest can assist healthcare organizations with the design and deployment of customized solutions through the Qwest® AdaptiveBuild® process, supported by Qwest technical experts in the Qwest National System Design Center. QMOE so-lutions are highly reliable and backed by a written Service Level Agreement (SLA) that defines performance guarantees. The Qwest Network Operations Center (NOC) continually monitors the health of the network to support SLAs.


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Network Requirements

Private, secure networking•Flexible capacity to accommodate large •planned and unplanned data transmissionsHigh availability and survivability•

Private, secure networking•Network extensibility, enabling remote and •mobile accessNetwork storage and retrieval•Quality of Service with high availability •

Capacitytotransportlargedatafiles•Network extensibility, enabling remote •accessHigh performance connectivity•Quality of Service with high availability•

•High network availability•Networkflexibilitytoaccommodatebursts•oftrafficQuality of Service•

Qwest Solution

QMOETM can include high capacity, redundant trunk connections enabling switching in the event of a detected failure.

QMOE runs on a private network managed by Qwest. It supports most higher-layer applications and is often used as the preferred transport to connectdatacentersbecauseofitslargefiletransfer capability.

QMOE typically supports PACS through point-to-point EVCs capable of handling large frame sizes (mammography images, 32 MB; CT, 20 MB; digital x-rays, 8 MB; MRI, 8 MB; Ultrasound, 5 – 8 MB; all types are experiencing regular and large increases in size).

The QoS feature available with QMOE enables prioritizationoftraffictoupdateinventorysys-tems in a cost-effective manner.

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BCDR) & StorageDriven by HIPAA and other regulations, off-site data storage and retrieval is vital to healthcare organizations.

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) & Computerized Physician Order Entry(CPOE)Healthcareorganizationsareadoptingnewapplicationsthateliminatepaperfilesandhandwrittenorders, while speeding universal access to complete patient information.

Picture Archival and Communications Systems (PACS)PACS solutions enable the archival and transmission of large, digital x-ray, MRI, CT and Ultrasound images.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)Used to improve supply chain and inventory management.

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Network Requirements

Scalable network connectivity to handle •exponential number of devices and data tags High resiliency•Private, secure network•High network availability•

High performance connectivity•Scalable network capacity to adapt to growing •demandHigh availability and survivability•

High capacity network•Quality of Service•

Qwest Solution

QMOETM is highly scalable in increments to adjust to increasing bandwidth needs driven by RFID technology. In addition, the service can aggregatetrafficfrommanysitestoahubforhandoff to a data center for further processing.

While customers often use QMOE to connect to the Internet, Qwest offers a broad array of ser-vices, including Qwest IQ Networking® for public and private Internet connectivity.

QMOE supports distance learning, video, data, and voice in an environment with low latency and jitter, necessary for sensitive applications.

RadioFrequencyIdentification(RFID)The FDA has completed pilots of RFID marking and bar coding of medical devices and medications to reduce errors, with adoption over the next 2 – 3 years. Physicians are also using wireless connectivity with EMR at the point of care.

Internet ConnectivitySupport for research, collaboration, email and Web access.

Medical and Professional Training Use of video and other media for training and professional development.Su

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Healthcare organizations realize that their role as critical first responders to emer-gencies and natural disasters requires robust, dependable communications net-works, with advanced business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities. In times of crisis, Qwest solutions keep networks up, accessible, and operating at peak perfor-mance.

High AvailabilityThe QMOETM infrastructure utilizes carrier-grade network elements, with stringent reliability requirements, and resilient failure recovery mechanisms to optimize the service for minimal failover administration.

Rapid Response TimesQwest assists healthcare organizations with the design and deployment of customized business continuity/disaster recovery solutions through the Qwest AdaptiveBuild process, backed by responsive account management and service delivery personnel committed to the Qwest Spirit of Service. In the event of a disaster, Qwest can help healthcare organizations implement a BCDR solution to ensure the survivability of mission-critical applications.

Enabling Robust First Responder Capabilities

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Ensuring regulatory compliance depends on secure, resilient transport of volumes of patient data, often stored on multiple network servers or backed up in remote data centers. QMOETM is provided across a carrier-class optical network with se-cure facilities governed by strict network policies designed to address the needs of the healthcare industry.

SecurityData travels over the QMOE infrastructure as native Ethernet, so many of the security methods used in the LAN can be extended across the metro area. Connections are made through Ethernet virtual circuits (EVCs) that partition traffic securely while maintaining connectivity across all devices. When complemented by stateful firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus solutions, and the like, security can be efficiently maintained across the network.

Flexibility/ScalabilityQMOE can support point-to-point and multipoint connections with band-width profiles up to 1 Gbps. Unparalleled scalability, with bandwidth profiles available in 10 Mbps increments from 10 to 100 Mbps, and in 100 Mbps in-crements from 100 to 1 Gbps, (also at 150 Mbps complementing traditional private line speeds) allow healthcare organizations to cost-effectively match QMOE to their requirements.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

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Healthcare providers must balance the need to implement advanced technolo-gies to improve efficiency and the quality of care with a mandate to reduce overall healthcare costs. QMOETM supports the continued adoption of new healthcare solutions, while helping to ensure regulatory compliance, with unsurpassed flexibil-ity and reliability.

Extended ReachQMOE can securely connect multiple healthcare facilities across a metropoli-tan area thus enabling healthcare professionals to: collaborate more easily; to centralize orders for medical equipment, supplies, and medicines. Plus, with a QMOE solution, efficient BCDR and remote storage plans can be implement-ed; all with the security, availability, and reliability that helps ensure regulatory compliance.

Lower IT Management CostsIn addition to eliminating LAN/WAN protocol conversions and the need to support multiple legacy WAN services, QMOE enables healthcare organiza-tions to merge IP data and applications, voice, video, and Internet traffic on a single network service. QMOE additionally enables the consolidating of serv-ers and remote facilities, further reducing overhead and ongoing management costs.

More Cost-Effective OverallQMOE bandwidth costs are typically lower than traditional private line servic-es and those based on synchronous optical networks. Unparalleled flexibility and scalability allows healthcare organizations to better tailor bandwidth to their specific requirements.

Reducing Operating Costs

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With industry leading density and performance, the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch router supports scalable, reliable and predictable SLA-based Carrier Ethernet services. The Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS router, part of the Service Rout-ing platform, overcomes the limitations imposed by traditional Ethernet switches while minimizing operating expenses to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Dramatically improves network stability, scalability, availability and performance •

Quality of Service management enables support for different traffic types •

Superior provisioning tools speed deployment of new Ethernet services •

For more information, please contact your Qwest Representative or go to www.qwest.com.

Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet: Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet from Qwest Communications Corporation

is available in selected areas. Rates vary depending on speed and term commitment selected. Installation

charge may apply. Additional equipment may be required. Contact Qwest for availability and additional

restrictions. All marks are the property of their respective companies.

Enabled by Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch


I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H

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Qmoe For Healthcare Wp090861