Cisco Network Enhances Patient Care and Services,Delivers Critical Communications Throughout Hospital System
SAN JOSE, Calif, -- November 10, 1998 -- Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the company is providing a high-speed backbone network to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center to deliver critical patient and quality-of-service applications throughout the hospital system. Cisco will provide the data infrastructure that will enable Santa Clara Valley Medical Center to enhance patient care and services and improve medical training. In addition, a new Agfa PACS (Picture Archival Communications System) will run on Cisco technology, accelerating timely diagnosis and medical care by providing high-speed access and transport of vital patient information, such as x-rays, CT scans, and other medical images.
Cisco's end-to-end health care network, using an 800 megabit Fast EtherChannel and OC3 asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) infrastructure, offers robust support in some of the most critical of Santa Clara Medical Center operations. The Cisco network is used to manage and control patient drug dispensing, fetal monitoring, diagnostic imaging services, and patient record keeping. In addition, Cisco's network will deliver video broadcast and on-demand video so that hospital staff in remote locations can access training materials, while saving time and the costs associated with travel.
"Cisco was the vendor of choice for the new hospital Santa Clara Valley Medical Center because they could address our growing business needs while enhancing the quality medical care we provide to a diverse community," said Anne Moses, Deputy Director of Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital Systems. "We were already relying on Cisco's networking leadership and customer responsiveness in other parts of the hospital, so it was a natural decision to partner with Cisco for increasing our network capacity and speed as we deploy new applications. As an added benefit, Cisco's network has helped in holding down the day-to-day operating costs of running a hospital by allowing us to standardize some of the business applications and more effectively manage overall communications," she said.
"Santa Clara Valley Medical Center understands the long-term value in using an information infrastructure to continually improve the services they can offer to patients, while at the same time, realize a measurable return on their existing investments," said Kathryn McTighe, manager of Global Health Care Market Development at Cisco. "Cisco's objective is to help the hospital take advantage of our experience to further improve both their customer and business processes."
Last year, Santa Clara Valley Medical began replacement of its existing network based on DIGITAL FDDI network equipment to a wide-area network (WAN) based overwhelming on high-speed Cisco routers and switches. Since then, the hospital has increased the bandwidth capacity of its backbone network threefold as it continues to build a unified, Cisco infrastructure that is reliable, secure and highly scalable to address future high-speed applications.
About Santa Clara Valley Medical
The hospital is a 396-bed public facility that provides quality medical services regardless of a patient's ability to pay. In addition, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center maintains an official trauma center that specializes in treating burn victims, high-risk pregnancies, newborn intensive care, and rehabilitation therapy for spinal cord and severe head injuries. The new IT-intensive hospital wing will replaced an existing 40-year-old facility.Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is theworldwide leader in networking for the Internet.Cisco, Cisco IOS, Cisco Systems and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
