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Cisco announced that the Dr. Erfan & Bagedo General Hospital, one of the oldest private hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , will be deploying a Cisco Unified Communications network to enable a collaborative Connected Health community environment. The solution has been designed to help the hospital to increase caregiver teamwork and productivity.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, October 15, 2009 - Cisco today announced that the Dr. Erfan & Bagedo General Hospital, one of the oldest private hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a leading healthcare establishment, will be deploying a Cisco Unified Communications® network to enable a collaborative Connected Health community environment. The solution has been designed to help the hospital to increase caregiver teamwork and productivity and will also provide better patient experiences by delivering increasingly sophisticated treatments more cost-effectively and efficiently.

The announcement represents another key milestone in Cisco's commitment to focus on improving and advancing communication and productivity in healthcare in Saudi. "Cisco's healthcare technology solutions facilitate secure access to network resources and applications from any location in order to promote security, improve patient care and response times and enhance operational efficiency," said Waleed Al Omari, director of sales, Commercial & Real Estate, Cisco, Saudi Arabia.

Cisco Connected Health technology assists with the streamlining of workflows and improves communication among clinicians. The application helps to save hours in redundant hospital practices through wasted communications cycles, allowing caregivers the opportunity to spend more time with their patients. It also facilitates security, reliability and regulatory compliance and helps to reduce capital and operating expenses of hospital facilities.

Efran Hospital will be fitted with Cisco Secure Wireless to improve mobility and privacy compliance and provide more services to patients. The system will help to deliver a highly secure, reliable foundation, thereby allowing the hospital to confidently deploy mobile applications and services. With this solution, the institution can use the latest WLAN technologies to increase employee productivity, while also meeting rigorous compliance standards for data privacy and security.

Cisco will initially collaborate with the Hardware Solutions Building Company Ltd (HASOUB) in bringing such information technology solutions to the Saudi Arabian market. HASOUB is a leading total IT solutions provider based in Saudi Arabia, with operations in Egypt, Jordan, and Boston, USA.  Founded in 2002, HASOUB delivers a broad portfolio of total solutions and outsourcing services to clients, in areas such as hardware, infrastructure cabling, networking, engineering, integrated services, customer care and on-demand logistical support services.

"Healthcare organisations have unique needs, which can be met only by securely connecting all healthcare employees to the same information and communications infrastructure to deliver vital resources anywhere, anytime, to any device, said Dr. Mohamad Erfan, general manager and CEO Erfan & Bagedo Hospital. "By deploying Cisco technology solutions throughout our hospitals network, we will not only be increasing our employee productivity but also providing an even better service to our patients," he added.

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