Wi-Fi Monitoring From Your Client's Eyes
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A clinician using a wireless clinical device connected to hospital Wi-Fi

Case Study

Large Medical Center Keeps Patient Care Connected with 7SIGNAL

The Problem

At a major Southeastern medical center, the measure of the wireless network is, in part, whether devices at the patients’ bedside stay connected. Technology like infusion pumps and clinical workstations depend on the medical center’s network. And when the Wi-Fi goes down, healthcare providers have to step away from caring for patients, reconnect, and, sometimes, rekey critical notes.

“Our customers are patients,” says the medical center’s principal network engineer. “We make sure the wireless devices ‘touching’ a patient are in order, whether it’s in-patient or outpatient. We don’t want an infusion pump dropping off the network.”

7SIGNAL ensures connectivity and uptime for the medical center via its sensors and agents, which the network engineer uses to manage the wireless experience.

Tickets Without a Visible Cause

After a series of technology upgrades across the hospital and clinics spurred waves of trouble tickets, the medical center’s principal network engineer said her existing network tools didn’t show anything wrong.

“We got trouble tickets with every version or OS upgrade,” she recalls. “The tickets stated this or that device isn’t connecting to this SSID. We would check the coverage, and we wouldn’t see any APs not serving clients.”

Although the coverage looked fine, devices kept failing to connect. “Our justification for buying 7SIGNAL’s agents was that they could show a driver version issue; we could then resolve all the tickets,” she says. “We bought enough agents to run on our mobile devices, and we got new drivers; that was the use case.”

Users tend to blame the network first, the network engineer notes, but the network is frequently not the problem. “The Wi-Fi is working,” she says. “7SIGNAL pinpoints that a device is using a different IP scheme, or the problem is cellular, or it’s an old driver we don’t support.”

Supporting Engineers and Technicians

Within the medical center, 7SIGNAL’s data serves more than the network engineers. The desktop engineering group, which configures devices and manages drivers, uses data from 7SIGNAL’s agents to check the performance of its standard builds when an issue appears on a larger scale. Support technicians in the field also use the agents to troubleshoot devices.

The Solution

7SIGNAL agents now run in the background on the devices the medical center issues to its workers—mostly Windows desktops and laptops, including wired machines in the call center and wireless clients throughout the facilities. "7SIGNAL's agents are just part of our tool kit," the network engineer says. "Every time we get a client reporting no Wi-Fi or dropped coverage, we look at the agent. If there is a whole unit saying they're having coverage issues, then we use a 7SIGNAL sensor to gather data."

The medical center added 7SIGNAL's sensors to its IT team's toolkit after initially deploying agents. The team started with a budget for 10 sensors and has grown the deployment to about 20, with more planned for one of the medical center's new clinics. The roughly 20 sensors are not fixed installations; staff mounted them on mobile carts, since some of the center's older hospitals are crowded with cables, monitors, and pipes.

7SIGNAL's agents also extend beyond the hospital's walls. The medical center's employees working from home include call center staff and doctors practicing telemedicine. "A doctor might have trouble pulling up patient charts," the network engineer says. "We have 7SIGNAL agents on their devices to tell if it's a driver issue or the wireless. Before we dispatch a technician, we can assess the problem."

The same holds for clinics up to 50 miles from the main hospital. "Getting to a clinic would be a day worth of mileage and time for a technician," the network engineer says. "We can proactively reboot an AP and save a technician's time and travel. So, 7SIGNAL's agents provide an ROI in time."

The Results

The medical center also runs Cisco's Catalyst Center and Prime Infrastructure. "Catalyst Center can give us a client experience. And 7SIGNAL gives us information as the client experiences it," says the network engineer. "We see information from the network perspective via Cisco. But if I have one group of devices not behaving, that gets maddening. 7SIGNAL's agents complete the picture: infrastructure and device."

"Our biggest justification for 7SIGNAL's sensors is the operational benefits," the network engineer says. "They offset the cost of having a dedicated FTE troubleshooting wireless complaints; we have proactive visibility of the health of our network and know about problems before users." The deployment continues to grow, with plans to add more sensors to one of the medical center's new clinics.

With 7SIGNAL's gear in place, nurses and doctors can deliver care, and patients receive care, unfettered by Wi-Fi downtime. "7SIGNAL is a great tool," the network engineer notes. "After being here 23 years, I've used a lot of technology."

We see the health of our network and know about problems before users.
Southeastern Medical Center,
Principal Network Engineer