Tekes GIGA March 29th, 2011

7signal -Making hospitalmission criticalWLANs work

Veli-Pekka KetonenCTO, founder

7signal – The WLAN Quality Company

• 7signal diagnostics products detect and predict wireless system performance and complications in order to prevent critical failures (risk management) in hospitals

• Team of senior experts (Nokia, Tellabs, GE Healthcare)

• Three granted patents, one application pending

• Founded in Helsinki, Finland in 2006

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7signal GIGA projects• Project 1 7/2007-8/2008 R&D & bus. dev.

– Market study, business development and customer demos– Specifications, patenting– Software and hardware development, 802.11b/g

• Project 2 3/2009-4/2010 R&D– 802.11a completion, 802.11n software support– Platform virtualization, usability improvements– New functionalities– FCC approval

• Project 3 6/2010- R&D– Medical application focus – 802.11n completion, FCC approvals– Data collection device & capability expansion

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Common (mis)beliefs related to WLAN

• WLAN access points used in enterprises cost a few tens of €’s• No one uses WLAN for anything critical because it is so unreliable• WLAN reliability can be improved by adding more access points• With current WLAN equipment and software, network planning can

be done without wireless skills• VoIP over WLAN is not yet used seriously anywhere• Once enterprise WLAN network is up and running, it is really stable.

It is enough to fix problems when end users report them

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WLAN is now essential parts of healthcare IT networks

• Critical devices: heart monitors, infusion pumps, defibrillators

• EMR (electronic medical record)• Medication dispensing• Personnel safety tags• Mobile VoIP• Equipment location tags (RTLS)• Robot carts• Staff, patient and guest services• Not just a network of

convenience!

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7signal Sapphire– A hardware/ software layer for

existing and new networks– Workstation for IT network

operating center– Vendor-independent

7signal Sapphire,The Wireless Quality Assurance (WQA) Solution

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7signal Sapphire consists of three elements

• Monitor• Measure• Record• Report

• Alarm• Analyze• Troubleshoot• Verify

Sonar test ends points are located near to application servers

Centrally located Carat manages Eyes, provides reports and alarms

One Eye unit manages 5-7 access points (indoors)

Radio analysis, radio packet capture and end-to-end application measurement

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7signal Eye, “the air control –radar”• Spectrum analysis

• Passive radio environment analysis with sector antennas• Spectrum analysis, sources of interference, airtime

utilization, channel allocations, neighbor access points, changes in radio spectrum use, space to operate reliable WLAN

• Packet capture and analysis• Capture radio data flows between access points and clients• Calculate client and AP level metrics like data rate usage,

number of clients, amount of retransmissions, data volume, AP load…

• Application performance• End-to-end, wireless and wired, up to apps server• Proactive tests, network seen as a “black box”• Emulate client traffic, measure user experience• Metrics like connection availability, throughput,

latency, jitter, VoIP MOS, success rates,…7signalSapphire Eye

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Management and reporting

• Centrally located Carat software manages even a large amount of Eye units

• One Eye unit typically covers indoors 5-7 access points with seven sectored high gain antenna beams

• Sonar located near the actual application servers and acts as a counterpart in automated measurements

• Fully configurable reports over email or user specific remote access to analytics over a web browser

• Fully configurable loss of connectivity, SLA or performance alarms

• Service level agreement monitoring covering complete traffic path including WLAN and LAN/WAN networks up to the application server

• Remote troubleshooting from network managers desk• SNMP interfaces are available to deliver data to other

systems

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From reactive to proactive network management

Example data,Beacon signal availability

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Target performance not met

Target performance not met

Target performance not met

• Network performance varies significantly over time while network managers have no visibility to these changes

Example data,Compliance against performance targets

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Optization 1 Optimization 3 Optimization 4

SLA metric includes- Radio attach rate- IP address rate- Beacon availability- DL throughput- UL throughput- VoIP MOS DL- VoIP MOS UL- RTT- Success rates / each test

Optimization 2

Significant improvement achieved

• Performance management provides capabilities to clearly enhance network service quality

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AP & controller

Cisco Meru 7signal

Configuration mgmt

RF simulation & visualization

Intrusion detection & prevention

RF spectrum analysis

E2E, wired & wireless

SLA compliance

Platform virtualization

Multi-vendor support

Locationing (RTLS)

AP & controller

Configuration mgmt

RF simulation & visualization

Intrusion detection & prevention

RF spectrum analysis

E2E, wired & wireless

SLA compliance

Platform virtualization

Multi-vendor support

Locationing (RTLS)

AP & controller

Configuration mgmt

RF simulation & visualization

Intrusion detection & prevention

RF spectrum analysis

E2E, wired & wireless

SLA compliance

Platform virtualization

Multi-vendor support

Locationing (RTLS)

Application performance

E2E, to application servers

Application performance

E2E, to application servers

Application performance

E2E, to application servers

Comparison of top WLAN vendor and 7signal offering

ISO-80001 will drive the market

• Effectively means hospitals need to treat WLAN and LAN networks as medical devices. To comply, hospitals must create a “…risk management process for the medical-IT network spanning planning, design, installation, device connection, configuration, use/operation, maintenance…”

• Hospitals need to appoint IT-network Risk Manager – Wireless LAN management and documentation tools become

ESSENTIAL

7signal has the only solution and service-based offering that can help hospital IT departments meet the new ISO standard

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New ISO/IEC-80001 standard Application of risk management for IT-networks incorporating medical devices to drive market adoption of Wireless Quality Assurance for WLANs

Next steps• Continue strong focus on US healthcare market• 7signal Solutions, Inc (an US subsidiary) was registered last

week in Ohio/US– Products and services

• Primary market, large/mid size US hospitals: ~ 2600 hospitalsBed size No. of hospitals >500 327 1st priority100-500 2227 2nd priorityTotal ~6000

• Two large US hospital customer cases (650/900 access points) in agreement phase

• Series-A financing round negotiations for US expansion ongoing

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