Case Study
Leading Medical Provider Gains Vital Connectivity Insights with 7SIGNAL's Digital Experience Monitoring Platform
The Problem
Every day, Northern Kentucky’s premier medical provider serves as a source of extraordinary and comprehensive care for its community. Making compassionate connections with patients is a key objective, and physicians, nurses, and dedicated associates rely on cutting-edge technology to improve caregiving at the bedside and beyond.
Over the years, the medical provider has invested in network, Voice over IP (VoIP), and Wi-Fi solutions that allow caregivers to move more freely with the use of mobile workstations and devices—from charting at the patient’s bedside to making their rounds.
With over 100 physician’s offices, outpatient clinics, and imaging centers, maintaining Wi-Fi stability is mission-critical for patient care and operational efficiency. However, as the medical provider’s network complexity grew, nurses, physicians, and staff began to report Wi-Fi connectivity and VoIP performance issues.
“The staff were experiencing intermittent connectivity issues on their Workstations on Wheels (WOWs) and inconsistent VoIP quality, but they were unable to provide the level of detail we needed to track down the problem,” said the medical provider’s Senior Wireless Engineer and long-time employee. “Our
networking planning and troubleshooting tools weren’t able to identify the error, and we didn’t have the time or resources to manually investigate random and elusive issues.”
It was apparent that the current system had run its course. With only one wireless engineer on staff and a five-person IT department, the medical provider required a solution that could guarantee its wireless devices would perform optimally 24/7.
The Solution
It was at this point, 7SIGNAL, the leader in digital experience monitoring, was brought on board. “We needed a monitoring solution that could fill in the gaps by tracking and capturing detailed device connectivity and performance,” said the wireless engineer. “By implementing 7SIGNAL’s Mobile Eye® Module, we would be able to run active and passive tests from the end user’s experience and quickly resolve issues from any device.”
The Mobile Eye agents were deployed to strategic clients to ensure connectivity for over 600 devices, including Android phones and Windows-based workstations on wheels (WOWs). The IT team also installed several 7SIGNAL Sapphire Eye® sensors (a software-enabled Wi-Fi performance sensor) in congested areas.
"We now have a solution that improves the experience of our end users and keeps them connected and operating with greater efficiency.
The Results
Since partnering with 7SIGNAL, the wireless engineer has benefitted from a 360-degree view of the Wi-Fi network and wireless devices with unattended active monitoring. “Instead of staring at a screen all day long and responding to issues reactively, I can proactively view a dashboard to see what our clients are doing and what they’re up to,” he explained. “The data is incredible. I love how it’s presented and now have a bird’s eye view of driver versions, roaming performance, count utilization, infrastructure insights, and more.”
Every morning, the wireless engineer runs a report on the worst “roamers” (moving wireless devices) to see if there are any issues. “Over the course of a few months, I can easily identify the sore thumbs such as access point coverage, WLAN connection, or adapter and driver issues,” he said. The 7SIGNAL dashboard provides a timeline, which provides visibility into wireless problems with the clients and the network.
“One of our biggest challenges was working with other internal groups such as Client Services to figure out the best process for updating driver versions. By using 7SIGNAL’s Mobile Eye, we were able to identify which driver versions on the WOWs were having performance issues,” said the wireless engineer. “It’s been a real eye opener. The information has empowered us to work together as a team to improve our upgrade processes and driver standards across the board.”
With the new insights, the wireless engineer can also identify if a WOW is having latency issues getting to and from an access point. From there, he can further investigate the issue and focus on improving performance in specific areas of the hospital.
7SIGNAL has helped the IT team resolve network congestion problems and identify devices and locations out of compliance with performance requirements. By having the right tools to monitor the wireless network from the end user’s perspective—the nurses, physicians, and associates—the medical
provider can more effectively and confidently serve the ones who need them the most, their patients.
“Healthcare is too important to be limited by technology. We now have a solution that improves the experience of our end users and keeps them connected and operating with greater efficiency,” concluded the wireless engineer. “We’re already looking ahead and are excited about the next phase with 7SIGNAL with plans to deploy more Sapphire Eye sensors.”
"We now have a solution that improves the experience of our end users and keeps them connected and operating with greater efficiency.