Huawei White Paper on Healthcare Industry Networks: Connected New Healthcare, Enjoying Great Health
1 Introduction
The world has transitioned into an information society, driven by cloud computing, BYOD, the Internet of Things, and big data. This evolution is pushing the information society to new heights. The healthcare industry, vital to national well-being, is at the forefront of this wave of informatization. Citizens will greatly benefit from this healthcare information revolution, and medical institutions will ride the information high-speed rail, propelling the industry to new peaks.
As a leading global ICT solutions provider and a beacon of China's technological advancement, Huawei has long focused on and promoted the informatization of China's healthcare sector. With the reputation and quality of a Fortune Global 500 company, Huawei offers unique technologies and solutions to healthcare industry clients, working alongside industry peers to foster the advancement of healthcare informatization in China.
2 The Healthcare Industry is Undergoing Changes
2.1 Healthcare Industry Trends
2.1.1 Political Environment
In recent years, governments at all levels have continuously introduced policies to boost the development of healthcare informatization. The "12th Five-Year Plan" for deepening the reform of the medical and health system, issued by the State Council, emphasizes the role of information technology as a crucial tool for improving the efficiency and service levels of medical institutions. The National Health and Family Planning Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Science and Technology have all introduced various policies, plans, and special initiatives to actively promote the in-depth development of healthcare informatization.
In 2012, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Pilot Reforms of Public Hospitals at the County Level," initiating pilot reforms in public hospitals across the country. The first batch of over 300 counties has already commenced pilot work; in 2013, the second batch of over 300 counties was about to start, bringing the total number of counties participating in comprehensive pilot reforms of public hospitals at the county level to nearly 700.
The "Guiding Opinions on the Construction of Management Information Systems for Grassroots Medical and Health Institutions" jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Health in 2012 aims to gradually establish information systems covering grassroots medical and health institutions in urban and rural areas by 2015. This initiative seeks to build dynamic electronic health records, achieve interoperability with electronic medical records, and lay the foundation for improving the service capabilities of grassroots medical institutions and providing safe, effective, and standardized basic medical and health services to urban and rural residents.
The telemedicine pilot projects launched by the National Health and Family Planning Commission have played a significant role in promoting the development of telemedicine and alleviating the imbalance of medical resources.
The "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China explicitly calls for the improvement of the hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model. The "Key Points of Municipal Health Administration and Medical Administration Work in Beijing in 2014" issued by the Beijing Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission proposes that Beijing will focus on the construction of medical alliances in 2014 to establish and improve a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment service system. By the end of June 2014, Beijing aims to have two medical alliances signed and operating in each of the six urban districts, and one medical alliance signed and operating in each of the suburban counties.
2.1.2 Economic Environment
In 2013, China's economy showed a stable and positive trend. The national GDP reached 56.9 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.7%, maintaining the same growth rate as the previous year. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 2.6% year-on-year, with the growth rate remaining the same as the previous year. According to the "Statistical Communiqué of the People's Republic of China on National Economic and Social Development in 2013" released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the per capita disposable income of Chinese residents in 2013 was 18,311 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.9%. After deducting price factors, the actual growth was 8.1%.
2.1.3 Social Environment
China has entered an aging society. As of the end of 2013, China had 202.43 million people aged 60 and above, accounting for 14.9% of the total population. Those aged 65 and above numbered 131.61 million, accounting for 9.7% of the total population. Experts predict that by 2050, the elderly population will account for one-third of China's total population. The rapid increase in the elderly population, especially the number of centenarians and disabled elderly people, which grows by an average of 1 million per year, highlights the growing demand for elderly care, rehabilitation, medical care, and spiritual and cultural services, making the issue of elderly care increasingly pressing. Chronic diseases are prevalent in China. In 2012, chronic diseases accounted for 85% of the total deaths in China, and the disease burden caused by chronic diseases accounted for 70% of the total disease burden.
China's society is undergoing rapid transformation, with unprecedented speed and scale in industrialization and urbanization. However, the rapid socio-economic development has also increased the risk factors for chronic diseases. On one hand, industrialization has come at a significant cost to resources and the environment, leading to severe environmental pollution. On the other hand, the upgrading of consumption patterns and changes in lifestyles, while improving sanitary and health conditions, have also contributed to the prevalence of risk factors for chronic diseases, such as obesity and overweight.
The floating population is growing rapidly. According to the "Report on the Development of China's Floating Population in 2013" released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission on September 10, 2013, China's floating population reached 236 million in 2012, meaning that one in every six people was a floating person. Floating married women of childbearing age accounted for 1/4 of all married women of childbearing age in China, and they accounted for 1/3 of the total births in 2012.
Public health awareness is increasing. With the significant improvement in living standards, people's health awareness, especially among urban residents, has undergone a tremendous change. People have higher expectations for health and desire to achieve better health through improving the external environment and personal lifestyle habits.
2.1.4 Technological Environment
The Internet is developing rapidly. As of December 2013, China had 618 million Internet users, with a net increase of 53.58 million users in the year. The Internet penetration rate was 45.8%. Meanwhile, the mobile Internet continued its strong growth momentum, reaching 500 million users, with a year-on-year growth rate of 19.1%. In 2013, the proportion of Chinese Internet users accessing the Internet via mobile devices reached 73.3%, significantly higher than that of users accessing via other devices.
Mobile Internet is further integrating with healthcare. Guo Shunyi, deputy director of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that with the in-depth development of the mobile Internet, mobile healthcare has evolved from simple applications such as ward rounds, mobile infusions, drug management, and mobile office within hospitals to a more integrated model that combines hospital and outpatient services. In terms of direction, with the increasing health awareness of individuals and the emergence of new terminals, mobile healthcare applications are shifting from a focus solely on treatment to a combination of treatment and health management. Furthermore, mobile healthcare is developing towards real-time, personalized, and customized services.
Wearable devices have broad application prospects in healthcare. Wearable devices are portable devices worn directly on the body or integrated into clothing or accessories. Wearable devices are regarded by various parties as a disruptive innovation technology that will succeed smartphones, with major technology companies and industry chain players entering the wearable health and medical market, signaling a major breakthrough for wearable health and medical devices. Given the trend of an aging society and the high cost of medical care in China, the application of wearable health and medical devices is expected to become the most revolutionary direction for mobile smart terminal technology after social networking, entertainment, fitness, and navigation.
DNA sequencing technology promotes personalized medicine. In the past, identifying disease-related genes among tens of thousands of human genes was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Scientists needed to collect samples from multiple affected family members to locate the gene. Now, with the powerful tool of rapid DNA sequencing, screening for disease susceptibility genes, designing and testing drugs for personalized medicine, and even personalized medical treatments are no longer distant dreams.
The rapid application of IT virtualization hardware architecture in the healthcare industry. IT hardware architecture is increasingly being virtualized through software or hardware management programs, which are then managed to map physical resources to virtual resources. The fundamental purpose of virtualization technology is to achieve full resource sharing by effectively managing the mapping relationship between virtual and physical resources, and these virtualized resources include servers, storage, and networks.
2.2 Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry
2.2.1 Increasingly Complex Healthcare Demands
Cross-regional healthcare service demands. With social and economic development and rapid population mobility, there is a demand for healthcare services that transcend institutions and regions. Residents expect to access services from any healthcare institution in any area, to change healthcare institutions at any time, and to avoid repetitive medical examinations, while also enjoying the benefits of their social security cards and receiving the medical services they desire.
Pursuit of personalized medical services. Traditional medical services are intermittent and undifferentiated, unable to provide the optimal diagnosis and treatment plan for individuals. With social progress, the popularization of basic medical knowledge, the establishment of resident health records, and the rapid development of DNA sequencing technology, personalized medical services are becoming possible. Future medical services will be continuous and personalized.
Increased focus on health management. With the rise in public health awareness, people are paying more attention to health management, with prevention as the primary goal.
Higher requirements for the quality of medical services. With the rise of consumerism, consumers' rights and interests are increasingly valued. In the context of a market economy, consumers pay for medical services, thus gaining more say in the quality of medical services and having higher expectations.
2.2.2 Insufficient Supply of Medical Resources
Shortage of medical and health resources. On one hand, there is a general shortage of healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, in Chinese medical institutions. Compared to developed countries, China has a lower density of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. While China's doctor density is comparable to the global average, the severe shortage of nurses and pharmacists hinders the improvement of service quality. On the other hand, healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP is low, which limits the growth of medical resources.
Uneven distribution of medical resources. The most significant issue facing the healthcare industry in China is the imbalance in the allocation of medical resources. Specifically, tertiary hospitals, which account for only 7% of all hospitals in China, possess 66% of the medical resources. In contrast, the vast number of secondary and below hospitals, accounting for 65% of all hospitals, possess only 18% of the medical resources. Furthermore, there is an uneven geographical distribution of medical resources, leading to significant population flow from less developed to more developed regions. This results in immense human, financial, and time costs for patients, and exacerbates the imbalance between the supply and demand of medical resources.
Rapid growth in national medical insurance expenditure. With the expansion of the medical insurance system's coverage and the continuous adjustment of benefit policies, especially after the full implementation of urban resident medical insurance, the demand for medical services from urban residents has been rapidly released. The utilization of medical services has increased significantly, leading to a trend of excessively rapid growth in medical expenses. The state will increase efforts to promote the reform of medical insurance payment methods.
2.2.3 Intensified Industry Competition
With the popularization of the Internet and increased health awareness, patients have a stronger ability to choose healthcare providers. Concurrently, the further opening up of medical records and the emergence of numerous private hospitals, coupled with reforms in public hospitals, have led to intensified competition among medical institutions. The healthcare sector urgently needs to improve its medical service capabilities and face more severe cost pressures.
2.3 Three Key Areas for Future Healthcare
2.3.1 Interconnection and Sharing of Healthcare Resources
Breaking down information silos within hospitals. Interconnection and information resource sharing are crucial tasks for digital hospitals. During the construction of digital hospitals, issues such as the inability to integrate information systems, the lack of information interoperability, and weak system construction have been prevalent. Healthcare informatization needs to evolve from simple business process applications to a new generation of digital hospitals characterized by unified platforms, unified standards and specifications, business interconnection centered on electronic medical records, and information integration.
Healthcare institution collaboration. Due to the current fragmented approach to healthcare informatization in China, data sharing and business collaboration among healthcare institutions at different levels and of different types are limited. Through the construction of regional healthcare information platforms, regional healthcare resource interconnection can be achieved, enabling data sharing among systems such as hospitals, maternal and child health, family planning, and emergency services. Hierarchical diagnosis and treatment are important pilot directions for current healthcare reform. By establishing a truly effective hierarchical medical model, high-quality medical resources can be directed to grassroots levels, achieving "minor illnesses treated in communities, major illnesses treated in hospitals." Telemedicine, as an effective means of sharing medical resources across regions, has broad development prospects in China. Telemedicine systems not only enable patients in impoverished or remote areas to access high-quality medical services but also allow medical experts to consult with patients in different locations, effectively balancing healthcare resources across regions and maximizing the utilization of existing medical resources.
2.3.2 Innovation in Patient-Centric Healthcare Service Models
Shift from an institution-centric to a patient-centric approach. Healthcare is fundamentally a service industry, and patients are customers and the ultimate beneficiaries. By adhering to this fundamental principle and adopting a patient-centric service philosophy, healthcare providers can avoid being swayed by the current imbalances in supply and demand or the asymmetry between people and institutions.
From independent services to collaborative services. Traditional healthcare services are typically provided by individual medical institutions, leading to a lack of collaboration in cross-institutional medical services and issues such as repetitive examinations. Future healthcare services should be collaborative, providing users with consistent medical services regardless of their location. Bidirectional referrals and telemedicine will be further promoted.
From undifferentiated intermittent services to personalized continuous services. Traditional medical services are intermittent. Future services will fully utilize comprehensive personal health records and electronic medical records to provide continuous services. Individual demands for medical services vary. With the rapid development of DNA sequencing technology, future healthcare should offer personalized diagnosis and treatment plans, and even medical insurance plans, tailored to individuals.
From disease treatment to health management. Residents are increasingly focusing on health, which requires healthcare services to transition from inpatient care to outpatient care, and from treatment services to health management services.
2.3.3 Efficient Management for the Future
With the continuous development of the market economy, healthcare institutions must strengthen their internal development to survive and thrive. Management plays an increasingly important role in hospital operations. Hospitals need to further improve the quality of medical services and reduce service costs.
Improving the quality of medical services. Hospitals should establish their brand through definitive efficacy and meticulous service, thereby enhancing their brand image and promoting the hospital's overall development. This will help avoid medical disputes and create social benefits, ensuring the long-term sustainable development of the hospital.
Reducing service costs through refined operational management. For better production and development, hospitals must manage human resources, finances, and materials more meticulously to provide the highest quality services at the lowest cost. In terms of human resource management, performance management should be strengthened to improve work efficiency. In terms of financial management, budget management should be strictly adhered to, and cost accounting should be enhanced to improve fund management efficiency. In terms of material management, a full lifecycle management approach should be adopted, covering procurement, operation, maintenance, and disposal.
3 Huawei Agile Network Supports Healthcare Industry Informatization
3.1 Connected New Healthcare, Enjoying Great Health
The primary challenge facing the healthcare industry is the imbalance between the supply and demand of healthcare resources. To better address the future of the healthcare industry, it is essential to focus on the interconnection and sharing of healthcare resources, innovation in patient-centric healthcare services, and efficient management for the future. As a leading global information and communication solutions provider, Huawei aims to leverage its intelligent and agile network to facilitate the interconnection and sharing of healthcare resources, promote innovation in healthcare services and management, and transform healthcare service models, ultimately improving the health of residents.
3.1.1 Connected New Healthcare
Humanity is about to enter the era of the Internet of Everything, and the healthcare industry of the future should also be interconnected. Within healthcare institutions, various application systems should be interconnected through local area networks to achieve business synergy. Interconnection between healthcare institutions should be realized through wide area networks to achieve large-scale sharing of healthcare resources. Between the public and healthcare institutions, real-time communication should be enabled through the Internet, 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi, utilizing various intelligent terminals and wearable devices. Future mobile healthcare will further enable point-to-point interconnection between patients and doctors, providing more personalized services. Huawei is committed to building an ubiquitous network that promotes the interconnection and sharing of healthcare resources, enabling residents to enjoy convenient healthcare services anytime and anywhere.
3.1.2 Enjoying Great Health
As the foundation of healthcare informatization, networks are crucial for intelligent healthcare applications. Considering the increasing complexity of healthcare networks today, in addition to basic high performance and high reliability, it is also necessary to consider how to efficiently manage the network and how to enable the network to better serve business needs. This requires a more intelligent network.
What constitutes an intelligent network? An intelligent network should simplify management tasks, whether it's managing network devices or handling network security incidents. An intelligent network should better serve business needs and users, meaning it should be user-oriented and business-oriented. Therefore, future healthcare networks must be able to flexibly and intelligently allocate network and security resources based on user needs and business requirements. Huawei's agile network provides an intelligent brain that integrates wired and wireless networks, supports service continuity, and offers three major intelligent features for simplified management: wired and wireless convergence, service continuity, and all-network security collaboration.
- Wired and Wireless Convergence: Traditionally, network maintenance personnel face significant pressure when maintaining wired networks. The addition of wireless networks further complicates operations. Huawei's wired and wireless convergence feature enables unified forwarding, access control, and operation of wired and wireless networks, transforming the two separate networks into a single network. Finally, by utilizing SVF (Super Virtual Fabric), a single network can be virtualized into one device, achieving maximum network simplification.
- Service Continuity: In traditional networks, various network security devices operate independently, and access control is managed separately, lacking an intelligent brain and leading to complex management. For example, wired and wireless networks require different access authentication, internet behavior management, and VPN gateways, all requiring separate authentication. Furthermore, network resources allocated to users are inconsistent, resulting in a poor user experience. Huawei provides an intelligent brain for the entire network, the agile controller, which can flexibly allocate network permissions based on different users, times, access methods, access locations, and devices. The agile controller also unifies access authentication and network resource allocation for all network security devices, ensuring a consistent user experience regardless of time, place, or device, thereby achieving service continuity.
- All-Network Security Collaboration: The intelligent brain can intelligently perceive and respond to the overall network security situation. Traditional solutions rely on deploying various security devices at the network perimeter and key points to ensure network security independently, lacking unified coordination and analysis. Huawei's agile controller can collect logs and security information from various IT devices, network devices, and security devices across the entire network. It then performs intelligent analysis based on big data, correlating seemingly unrelated events to gain a comprehensive understanding of the network's security posture and enabling coordinated security actions. Traditional security solutions can only deploy security devices at fixed locations at the network perimeter and key points, unable to flexibly allocate security resources based on business needs. The "intelligent brain" also provides a security resource pool function, which can intelligently allocate corresponding security resources based on business needs. For instance, it can define custom rules to direct specific terminal traffic or user traffic to the security resource pool for inspection, thereby achieving flexible allocation of security resources and serving as a valuable supplement to existing security solutions.
3.2 Huawei Healthcare Industry Solutions
3.2.1 Digital Hospital Network Solutions
Network construction is key to the initial stages of hospital informatization. As hospital informatization deepens, various information systems become interconnected, and network bandwidth shifts from supporting single services to supporting unified multi-service access. All core business applications within a hospital run on a single IP-based network, including the Hospital Management Information System (HMIS), Clinical Information System (CIS), Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems. These critical business systems are related to patients' lives, health, and property safety, and they impact the hospital's core competitiveness and revenue. Therefore, the reliability and security of hospital networks are paramount. Additionally, hospital IT maintenance personnel are limited, creating an urgent need for a convenient and manageable network.
Huawei provides a reliable, secure, and easily manageable network for hospitals by leveraging its advanced agile network solutions.
High-Reliability Hospital Network
The reliability of a hospital network can be ensured through three aspects: device-level reliability, network-level reliability, and service deployment reliability.
Regarding device reliability, in addition to the basic reliability requirements for device components, emphasis is placed on hardware redundancy for individual devices. This typically includes redundant control planes, redundant switching fabrics, and hot-swappable line cards and power supplies. By utilizing redundant components, the availability of a single device can be improved even when its individual components have a certain level of reliability.
Network reliability requires reasonable network planning and advanced clustering technology. For large and medium-sized hospitals, which often have multiple buildings and numerous access points, a three-tier network architecture is recommended. The access layer can utilize stacking technology to enhance reliability. Floor switches should have dual uplinks to the aggregation layer, and the aggregation layer should continue to use dual uplinks to the core layer. At the core layer, two high-performance Huawei Agile Switches, the S12700, can be used to form a CSS2 cluster. The Huawei S12700 switch innovatively implements the industry's only back-to-back CSS2 cluster technology, which uniquely supports cluster system operation even with a single active control plane, providing higher reliability for hospital networks.
To further enhance the reliability of hospital networks, more consideration should be given to service deployment. For hospitals that can afford it, dual-site active-active data center construction can be implemented to ensure business continuity. However, this construction method is expensive, and hospitals may not have sufficient budget to support it. For most hospitals, deploying business systems across different buildings is a more feasible option. By deploying business systems in two buildings simultaneously, business can be quickly restored even if one building's data center is damaged.
Highly Secure Hospital Network
Security is a fundamental requirement for hospital network construction, achievable through three dimensions: network construction methods, network device deployment, and security management.
Hospitals typically consist of three networks: internal network, external network, and device network. These three networks can be constructed in two ways: a completely independent construction, where each network uses separate access, aggregation, and core devices; or a converged construction, where all three networks share the same access, aggregation, and core devices. Independent construction is more expensive but offers better isolation and security. Converged construction is less expensive but relies on logical isolation between the three networks, which may lead to mutual interference and lower security.
Networks are divided into different zones, with specific access control rules set for each zone. Firewalls are deployed in each zone to control inter-zone access. Intrusion detection systems are deployed alongside the core switching area to detect various intrusion attempts in real-time. The security management zone is equipped with antivirus software, network management software, and access control software to implement security management for the internal network. Database audit software is also deployed to audit systems such as HIS and EMR, meeting the requirements for hierarchical protection. Internet gateway firewalls are deployed at the Internet exit to prevent network attacks from the Internet. Network behavior management devices are used to manage Internet bandwidth, filter URIs, and audit internet behavior. VPN gateway devices provide remote access capabilities, allowing hospital leaders to access remotely for office work and network administrators to perform network fault handling. Web application firewalls are deployed in the external application zone to prevent web application attacks.
In terms of security management, traditional security solutions involve deploying various security software and hardware at the application, data, host, network, and physical layers. While this approach is sound, practical deployment often reveals frequent security incidents within the network, leading to security management personnel being overwhelmed. Therefore, more intelligent security incident management is needed. Huawei offers an all-network security collaboration function that collects logs and security information from various IT devices, network devices, and security devices across the entire network. It then performs intelligent analysis based on big data, correlating seemingly unrelated events to gain a comprehensive understanding of the network's security posture, simplifying security management, effectively identifying true security threats, and enabling intelligent security control and management.
Conveniently Managed Hospital Network
Hospital network maintenance personnel are limited, creating an urgent need for a conveniently managed network. This can be divided into two parts: management of network devices and security control of network resources.
Huawei eSight is a next-generation management system for hospital campus networks. It not only supports intelligent management of network devices but also supports unified management of multi-vendor devices, IT & IP, and third-party devices. Additionally, eSight provides a flexible open platform to tailor its intelligent management system for hospitals. Huawei eSight offers various functions, including: multi-vendor device management; unified resource management; visualized unified view; comprehensive fault monitoring; refined monitoring of computer rooms; auxiliary intelligent building security monitoring; and hierarchical, segmented, and time-based user management.
Huawei's wired and wireless convergence solution supports SVF (Super Virtual Fabric) technology, which innovatively virtualizes not only box-type switches into line cards of chassis switches but also virtualizes APs into ports of chassis switches. This transforms the traditional network architecture of "core/aggregation + access switch + AP" into a single device for management, providing the industry's most simplified network management solution.
Huawei's innovative iPCA (intelligent Path Control Algorithm) technology changes the traditional model of using simulated traffic for fault localization. It enables real-time, on-demand network quality monitoring for any service flow without additional overhead. This monitoring is directly and accurately pinpointed to the faulty port, achieving a significant shift from "rough maintenance" to "precision maintenance."
Traditional networks typically only provide device-level management and lack fine-grained control over network resources. Huawei provides an intelligent brain for the entire network, the agile controller, which can flexibly allocate network permissions based on different users, times, access methods, access locations, and devices. The agile controller also unifies access authentication and network resource allocation for all network security devices, ensuring a consistent user experience regardless of time, place, or device, thereby achieving fine-grained control over network resources and ensuring service continuity.
3.2.2 Mobile Healthcare Network Solutions
In recent years, with the development of wireless technology, wireless networks have been widely used in the healthcare industry. Typical applications include mobile ward rounds, mobile infusions, mobile nursing, and infant anti-theft systems. These mobile healthcare applications have greatly helped hospitals improve service efficiency and reduce medical errors. Mobile healthcare enables the full utilization of limited medical resources, improves patient satisfaction, and has become a hot topic in the development of healthcare informatization.
On one hand, mobile healthcare allows hospitals to break free from the limitations of traditional wired network models and enter a new era of wireless and mobile applications, achieving business innovation and enhancing core competitiveness. On the other hand, this new application model requires hospitals to first build a wireless network to serve as the foundation for mobile healthcare applications. However, due to a lack of relevant experience, the results are often unsatisfactory, leading to various problems, such as how to smoothly extend the existing network to support wireless networks, issues with wireless signal coverage, and problems with wireless roaming and network security. In response to these issues, Huawei offers corresponding mobile healthcare network solutions.
Smooth Extension of Network
For many hospitals, mobile healthcare has become a clear direction for future informatization, but the specific implementation of related business is still in the planning stage. Wireless networks are essential, but they should not be deployed blindly. Therefore, the primary consideration for hospitals is how to smoothly extend the network to support future wireless networks. Will the network architecture undergo significant changes? Will the entire hospital be deployed, or even expanded to branch hospitals? Will the performance meet requirements? Will it be necessary to invest heavily in funds?
To address these issues faced by hospitals, Huawei's S12700 core switch provides the answer: Firstly, the S12700 offers onboard AC functionality. Its service boards can not only forward traditional wired traffic but also act as ACs to forward wireless traffic, meaning the S12700 achieves deep integration of wired and wireless networks. The S12700 provides onboard AC functionality by default. When deploying wireless APs in the future, the core network will remain unchanged, and no additional equipment will be needed; only the corresponding wireless licenses need to be purchased as required. Secondly, the onboard AC performance of the S12700 is a hundred times that of traditional ACs, supporting up to 4K APs. This means that future hospital wireless networks can expand from regional coverage to campus-wide coverage, and even cover multiple branch hospitals. Thirdly, the S12700's onboard AC utilizes a fully programmable ENP chip, which can support the latest wireless protocols through software upgrades, eliminating the need to replace hardware to support new wireless protocols. The S12700 provides a low-cost, smoothly scalable solution for hospitals to support wireless networks.
Comprehensive Wireless Network Coverage
During mobile ward rounds, medical staff often encounter slow application response times or complete disconnections. This is primarily due to poor wireless signal coverage or dead spots, especially when accessing PACS images, which can take tens of seconds. The most common issue in hospitals is dead zones in restrooms. In reality, the main difference between wireless and wired deployment lies in network planning. A low-quality wireless network plan can lead to service unavailability. Leveraging its deep expertise in the wireless field, Huawei has developed an innovative intelligent network planning tool that can conveniently perform optimal network planning based on the actual hospital environment (automatically indicating where APs should be installed). Combined with the zero-configuration deployment feature of APs, it helps users easily set up wireless network environments.
In actual projects, each hospital has a different building layout and wall material, which can cause significant signal attenuation. Simple, standard AP deployment solutions may not meet customer requirements. To address this situation, Huawei offers various solutions, such as the "intelligent distributed" solution, which uses corridor APs with antennas directed into rooms to avoid wall attenuation, allowing a single AP to cover an entire floor. A single antenna can support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, effectively achieving wireless coverage in rooms without roaming issues, ensuring service continuity. This solution supports the latest WLAN technology standard, 802.11ac, providing ample wireless bandwidth for mobile healthcare services. Additionally, Huawei's wall-plate APs can replace existing Ethernet wall plates (while retaining the Ethernet port functionality), thereby achieving wireless coverage in every room. For environments where APs cannot be deployed indoors (e.g., rooms), Huawei also offers solutions, such as outdoor APs (mounted on exterior walls) that provide wireless coverage inside rooms.
Seamless Roaming Wireless Network
Roaming interruptions are also a common issue with wireless networks. When medical staff move from one ward to another, the network suddenly requires re-authentication, which is time-consuming and cumbersome.
Huawei's mobile healthcare network solution provides seamless roaming capabilities, ensuring uninterrupted mobile ward rounds and mobile nursing services for medical staff. Wireless interference is a significant factor affecting roaming, and network conflicts can lead to roaming failures. Huawei has observed numerous 2.4GHz signal sources in actual hospital scenarios that interfere with each other. Therefore, when deploying mobile healthcare in hospitals, in addition to professional network optimization and planning to avoid interference, Huawei also recommends prioritizing 5GHz access. When purchasing medical terminals, it is advisable to consider support for 5GHz wireless networks.
Secure and Controllable Wireless Network
When deploying wireless networks, due to the inherent limitations of wireless technology, it is difficult to deploy two independent networks in the same area. Therefore, in the same area, the wireless internal network and the wireless external network can only be the same wireless network. What is more complex is that hospital wireless networks are not only open to medical staff but also to patients. Different roles require access to different services, making security issues more severe. To address these security issues, it is first necessary to perceive the complex scenarios and then implement corresponding access control. Huawei provides fine-grained control capabilities based on context awareness for the healthcare industry. Context awareness means knowing who is accessing, using what device, from where, and at what time. Based on this information, different permissions, bandwidth, and QoS can be provided according to different scenarios, enabling fine-grained control of wireless networks and ensuring the security and controllability of hospital network access.
Mobile healthcare inevitably involves the use of a large number of mobile terminals, and patient information may be stored on them. The portability of mobile terminals increases the risk of patient information leakage. Huawei offers the AnyOffice solution, which creates a secure isolated environment on smart terminals for storing hospital data. All hospital data is encrypted and stored, ensuring data security even if the terminal is lost.
3.2.3 Regional Healthcare Network Solutions
According to the "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Medical and Health System" issued by the state on April 6, 2009, the five key tasks for the following three years include accelerating the establishment of a basic medical security system, initially establishing a basic drug system, improving basic medical services in urban and rural areas, promoting the equalization of basic public health services, and piloting reforms in public hospitals. Therefore, establishing a national electronic health record system is a priority task. Secondly, it is necessary to achieve interconnection and data sharing of regional healthcare information.
Regional healthcare information platforms involve collaboration among multiple healthcare institutions and require connection through wide area networks. They need to support the access of various types of branch institutions and possess characteristics such as security, reliability, scalability, and ease of management. Huawei has accumulated rich experience in healthcare projects over many years. By fully understanding the goals and complexities of regional healthcare informatization, Huawei assists healthcare industry clients in building the foundational infrastructure for regional healthcare informatization and achieving long-term sustainable development.
Secure and Reliable
The solution features a layered and segmented design, with external security defenses and strict internal access control. It is equipped with comprehensive security products, including firewalls, audit systems, VPN gateways, and terminal access control, to meet security compliance requirements.
Huawei's regional healthcare network solution provides the industry's fastest 50ms fault convergence speed, redundant core nodes, and active-standby link design, ensuring 7x24-hour cross-institutional information sharing and business continuity.
Scalability
The regional healthcare platform involves the access of various branch institutions. Huawei supports flexible and scalable access methods, including government extranets, dedicated operator lines, and VPN, 3G/4G access.
The regional healthcare platform's data center requires the processing of a large amount of healthcare data, necessitating the configuration of high-performance data center switches with rich interfaces and virtualization capabilities.
Ease of Management
Huawei offers the industry's unique iPCA technology to detect and diagnose complex link failures in regional healthcare networks. By monitoring network services in real-time, it can accurately analyze fault points and ensure normal business operations.
3.2.4 Telemedicine Network Solutions
Due to the uneven socio-economic development in China, quality medical resources are concentrated in economically developed regions and large cities, leading to a shortage of medical resources in central, western, and rural areas, making it difficult for people to access medical care. Telemedicine is an effective way to adjust the imbalance in the distribution of medical resources, accelerate the development of grassroots medical and health service systems, and promote the equalization of medical and health services in urban and rural areas. It is also an important component of healthcare informatization projects and a key driver for deepening the reform of the medical and health system. Therefore, new healthcare reform measures in China attach great importance to the construction and application of telemedicine systems.
Huawei actively contributes to the field of health information technology. In 2013, the National Health and Family Planning Commission's Information Center and Huawei jointly drafted the hardware technical specifications for the "Technical Specifications for Telemedicine Information Systems." Huawei, based on its comprehensive ICT solutions, can provide products and solutions for telemedicine data centers, IT infrastructure, network communication platforms, video conferencing platforms, and emergency medical vehicles, which are adaptable to various scenarios. By integrating telemedicine application software, Huawei simplifies telemedicine operational processes. Furthermore, by connecting medical instruments and hospital information systems through medical data acquisition devices, Huawei can collect and transmit relevant data in real-time.
Telemedicine involves collaboration among multiple healthcare institutions and requires connection through wide area networks. It needs to support the access of various types of branch institutions and provide video, voice, and medical data collaboration. It should offer a good user experience and collaboration capabilities, supporting flexible access.
High-Quality Video Experience
The industry's first panoramic telemedicine system provides an face-to-face communication experience. The 200ms large buffer ensures smooth video and audio transmission, uninterrupted real-time business interaction, and an excellent user experience.
System-Wide Collaboration
The telemedicine platform's rich interfaces and protocols support high-definition consultation audio and video and soft terminal access anytime and anywhere. It also supports lossless access to medical instruments and hospital information systems for multi-stream data transmission.
Multi-Service Access
The integrated access gateway integrates routing, switching, security, and service access into a single design, supporting mobile 3G/4G access. In emergency scenarios such as ambulances, it supports the access of various medical devices, providing stable, efficient, secure, and anytime-anywhere remote emergency access capabilities.
3.2.5 Healthcare Data Center Solutions
Healthcare institutions are increasingly adopting virtualization technologies for business innovation, including server virtualization and desktop cloud applications. This requires networks to possess high performance, scalability, and virtualization capabilities.
High-Performance Data Center Core Switches
With the improvement of server performance, GE network cards are gradually being upgraded to 10GE network cards, increasing the performance requirements for network switches tenfold. Therefore, whether it is for server access or TOR uplink aggregation, the line card forwarding performance and port density of core switches have increased dramatically. Huawei's CE12800 data center core switch supports a maximum switching capacity of 64Tbps (smoothly upgradeable to 128Tbps) and offers the industry's highest density 8*100GE, 24*40GE/96*10GE line cards that support wire-speed forwarding. This meets the demands of cloud computing data centers and builds a stable network architecture for the next decade.
High-Performance Data Center Firewalls
A large number of virtual machines are deployed in healthcare data centers. After the virtualization of all servers, storage, and networks, firewalls must also possess corresponding virtualization capabilities and meet the high-performance requirements of data centers.
Huawei's high-end data center firewall, the USG9500, offers a true business throughput of 200Gbps, meeting the growing demand for bandwidth. It maintains excellent performance even when complex rules are applied and the log collection is enabled, achieving a new build rate of 5 million sessions per second and a concurrent session rate of 80 million sessions per second, ensuring the smooth operation of hospital HIS, PACS, EMR, and data mining services.
The USG9500 supports 4096 virtual firewalls, enabling the isolation of different zones within the hospital and the segmentation of services such as HIS, PACS, EMR, and data mining, allowing for customized firewall rule configurations for each service.
Comprehensive Virtualization Features
The CE12800 utilizes VS (Virtual System) technology to provide the industry's highest 1:16 device virtualization capability, virtualizing a single physical device into multiple independent logical devices. This meets the needs of users for shared core switches in internal, external, and testing zones of healthcare networks.
Huawei's data center solution can perceive virtual machine migrations. The network management system can periodically collect information about the physical location and related interface links of virtual machines. When a virtual machine migrates, the network topology display is automatically updated. When a virtual machine migrates, the corresponding network policies are automatically migrated, ensuring continuous and stable service operations.
3.3 Huawei Healthcare Industry Case Studies and Practices
3.3.1 Digital Hospital Practices
3.3.1.1 Sanya People's Hospital, Hainan
Sanya People's Hospital is the only comprehensive Class A tertiary hospital and Baby-Friendly Hospital established by the Sanya Municipal Government. The hospital adheres to the hospital's philosophy of "patient first" and upholds the qualities of "respecting science, practicing medicine with virtue, and pursuing excellence" to provide first-class services to society. In recent years, Sanya People's Hospital has experienced rapid business growth, requiring an expansion of the existing hospital network. This project involves the construction of a new core computer room for the entire hospital and a new inpatient building, forming the basis for building a high-performance, highly reliable modern network for the entire hospital.
To meet the demand for interconnection between internal and external networks and reduce construction costs, Huawei provided a logical solution for internal and external networks, effectively reducing construction costs and enabling efficient business synergy. Two CE12800s from Huawei were used as the core of the hospital's data center, providing the largest switching capacity in the industry, rich network interfaces, and comprehensive virtualization capabilities. Two S12700s were used as the core of the campus network, providing deep integration of wired and wireless networks. The S12700 offers onboard AC functionality by default, enabling unified forwarding and access control for wired and wireless networks. The campus core utilized the CSS2 hardware cluster solution, featuring Huawei's innovative 1+N backup technology for the main control, which innovatively achieves cross-frame redundancy with a single active control plane in the cluster system, providing unprecedented reliability for the cluster system and laying the foundation for stable hospital business operations.
To support mobile ward rounds and mobile nursing applications, Huawei provided professional network optimization and planning services. It utilized a combination of indoor wall-plate APs, panel APs, and outdoor APs to achieve comprehensive network coverage, supporting 5G frequency bands and the latest 802.11ac standard, thereby effectively enhancing wireless network performance and enabling mobile healthcare service continuity. Huawei provides context-aware fine-grained control capabilities for BYOD scenarios. Context awareness means knowing who is accessing, using what device, from where, and at what time. Based on this information, different permissions, bandwidth, and QoS can be provided according to different scenarios, enabling fine-grained control of wireless networks.
The completion of the Sanya People's Hospital inpatient building network has provided a reliable and secure agile network environment for the hospital, ensuring 24/7 stable operation of hospital business. The high-performance data center switches have helped the hospital cope with rapid business growth. The deep integration of internal and external networks has enabled efficient business synergy and reduced network construction costs.
3.3.1.2 Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital
Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital (Shanxi Provincial Cardiovascular Disease Research Institute), established in 1980, is affiliated with the Provincial Health Department. It is a Class A tertiary specialized hospital that integrates medical treatment, scientific research, teaching, prevention, healthcare, and rehabilitation. It is a teaching hospital of Shanxi Medical University and a nationally recognized "people's hospital." In recent years, with the increase in business volume at Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital, the hospital's bed capacity has become increasingly tight, with annual outpatient visits and inpatient admissions exceeding the set quotas. Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital planned to build a new building and required a comprehensive network upgrade and new construction.
Huawei assisted Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital in completing the entire network construction and upgrade. Two S12700s were used as the core of the network, configured with Huawei's innovative CSS2 hardware cluster solution, which built a highly reliable network environment for the hospital, ensuring stable operation of core hospital business. This has laid a solid network foundation for building a remote healthcare system covering the entire North China region. Additionally, the onboard AC functionality provided by the S12700 enables a smooth evolution towards mobile healthcare and fine-grained management, effectively addressing complex wireless access scenarios.
3.3.1.3 Tianjin Hospital
Tianjin Hospital, with a focus on orthopedics, is a specialized Class A tertiary hospital that integrates modern medicine with traditional Chinese and Western medicine treatments. It is a renowned orthopedic base in China. Tianjin Hospital and its predecessor were founded in the early 1940s by Professor Xianzhi Fang, a pioneer in Chinese orthopedics, and inherited and developed from the Tianjin Orthopedic Hospital.
In recent years, Tianjin Hospital's business has grown rapidly. In 2013, Tianjin Hospital planned a new campus with a construction scale of 160,000 square meters, making it the largest single-building complex in Tianjin. The planned capacity is 1600 beds, with an estimated 2 million outpatient and emergency visits, 40,000 inpatient visits, and 50,000 surgical procedures annually. The new building requires the capability to support the hospital's rapid development and to fully leverage existing investments. Huawei, based on the hospital's different business function zones, provided a three-tier network architecture solution for access, aggregation, and core. The overall solution is smoothly scalable and extensible. The core utilizes Huawei's high-performance data center switch, the CE12800, which supports comprehensive network virtualization capabilities, offering significant advantages in forwarding performance and green energy efficiency, meeting the hospital's business growth needs for the next 5-10 years. Huawei assisted in filtering existing network security devices from the old building to build the external network for the new building, achieving full reuse of existing assets.
3.3.2 Mobile Healthcare Practices
3.3.2.1 Peking University First Hospital
As a Class A tertiary national hospital, Peking University First Hospital has been actively exploring new avenues for healthcare informatization in recent years. It has collaborated with numerous internationally renowned vendors to advance its healthcare informatization efforts, completing the informatization transformation of business systems such as HIS, LIS, PACS, and others. In 2012, based on business needs, the hospital began planning to build a wireless ward round system, further accelerating and improving the informatization process at Peking University First Hospital.
Huawei assisted Peking University First Hospital in building its wireless network. Through precise and reasonable wireless planning, Huawei combined indoor APs and outdoor APs in a coordinated manner to achieve comprehensive coverage across various complex areas. It also ensured secure isolation between the wireless network and the wired network, providing a secure and reliable access authentication method for wireless users and enabling seamless roaming for mobile healthcare services.
The establishment of Peking University First Hospital's wireless network has greatly enriched the network transmission modes, streamlined the hospital's "network," and provided a secure and stable underlying transmission platform for mobile ward rounds and other mobile healthcare applications. This has helped the hospital improve its service quality, reduce medical errors, and elevate Peking University First Hospital's healthcare informatization to a new level.
3.3.2.2 Shandong Provincial Hospital
Shandong Provincial Hospital, founded in 1897, has a history of 117 years and is a leading provincial healthcare system and the largest comprehensive hospital in Shandong Province. It currently has 3294 open beds, with over 3 million outpatient and emergency visits in 2013. In 2004, it began establishing a medical group, which now comprises 9 member units, making it the strongest medical group in Shandong Province in terms of comprehensive service capabilities.
The main campus of Shandong Provincial Hospital has aging network equipment and needs to implement mobile healthcare systems such as wireless ward rounds. Huawei provides the innovative S12700 agile switch as the core exchange machine, configured with the second-generation hardware switch cluster CSS2 solution, which virtualizes two core exchange machines into one, enhancing reliability while simplifying management.
Wireless access equipment primarily uses indoor wall-plate AP6010DN, which won the German iF Design Award. This product meets the demand for anytime, anywhere access to the internal network and is compatible with the comfortable environment requirements. The AP6010DN is a dual-band 802.11n AP that supports simultaneous access to 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, allowing for scalable bandwidth and efficient utilization of 5GHz for value-added services (such as mobile ward rounds). Its wireless high-speed access of 300Mbps per radio, with dynamic bandwidth sharing, can meet the real-time access requirements for large-bandwidth applications such as PACS images. The integration of wireless networks with IoT terminals, coupled with the implementation of bedside patient systems, anesthesia, and intensive care management systems, has comprehensively improved the hospital's diagnostic and treatment efficiency, service quality, and brand competitiveness.
The network upgrade of Shandong Provincial Hospital's main campus has achieved unified management of wired and wireless networks, high-speed information sharing, and simplified operations management. The high-speed seamless coverage of WLAN, combined with wireless ward round systems, hospital bedside systems, and intensive care management systems, has significantly improved medical staff efficiency and patient experience. Furthermore, in addition to meeting the current network demands of hospital informatization systems, the agile switch can also be smoothly upgraded to SDN networks, facilitating the deployment of future new services and network evolution.
3.3.3 Telemedicine Practices
3.3.3.1 First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University
Telemedicine is an effective way to adjust the imbalance in the distribution of medical resources, accelerate the development of grassroots medical and health service systems, and promote the equalization of medical and health services in urban and rural areas. It is also an important component of healthcare informatization projects. In Henan Province, a service network covering 118 county-level hospitals has been established, centered around the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. This network aims to build a "province-county-township-village" four-level linkage of telemedicine service systems.
Huawei utilizes two high-performance NE series routers as the core of the entire telemedicine dedicated network. Secure interconnection with external networks is established through the exit nodes, enabling interconnection with the national telemedicine regulatory and service center, other provincial regional healthcare information platforms, and providing downward access to municipal/county/township/village healthcare institutions, thereby enabling mobile access for consultation experts and mobile access for remote ambulances.
Within the data center, advanced cloud computing technology is used to support telemedicine services, building a green and scalable telemedicine data center platform. Huawei's CE12800 and CE6800 data center switches are deployed to build a high-performance, non-blocking fat-tree network, reducing network latency and providing high-density 10GE/GE server access capabilities externally, fully meeting the deployment requirements of large-scale data center networks. Two Huawei security access gateways are deployed alongside the two routers as backups. VPN traffic accessed via the Internet is decrypted at the security access gateways, including access from township health centers, village clinics, and traveling experts.
Huawei's dedicated healthcare network and data center integrated solution has empowered the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University to build the Henan Province telemedicine service and regulatory platform, establishing a province-wide telemedicine service system that interconnects with the national telemedicine regulatory and service center. This has made the Henan Provincial telemedicine regional platform a national leader and model.
3.3.4 Regional Healthcare Practices
3.3.4.1 Xinjiang Regional Healthcare
The Xinjiang Autonomous Region's regional healthcare information platform system is based on the collection and storage of regional health record information. It can automatically generate, distribute, and push work task lists, providing support for healthcare information platform development in various healthcare institutions in the region. The platform primarily focuses on serving residents while also considering healthcare management and auxiliary decision-making needs. The Xinjiang regional healthcare system network covers one provincial healthcare department central node, 14 prefectural central nodes, and over 100 county (city) nodes.
Huawei's AR3260 multi-service router is deployed in the regional healthcare data center. The AR3260 supports various network access methods, including ADSL, E1/T1, and FE/GE access to the healthcare dedicated network. This addresses the vast geographical area of Xinjiang and the uneven levels of network infrastructure development across different regions. The integrated 3G and LTE functionality enables stable connection to the healthcare dedicated network even in areas where wired networks are not available.
Hospitals at all levels need to connect to the Internet through routers or firewalls. Healthcare institutions at different levels establish IPSec VPNs with the autonomous region, prefectural, and municipal centers, respectively. Depending on the hospital's business volume, different bandwidth and access methods for internet access can be selected.
Huawei's dedicated healthcare network solution aligns with the network characteristics of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, helping to gradually build a comprehensive, high-capacity, and highly reliable information-based integrated network platform covering the entire Xinjiang region. This enables secure and high-speed sharing of healthcare data between the autonomous region, prefectures, and counties, balancing regional healthcare resources and facilitating convenient medical treatment for the public.
3.3.4.2 Sichuan Jidiwei
The Sichuan Provincial Healthcare Informatization Plan is based on the "25211" framework, which aims to establish provincial and municipal regional information platforms, covering five major application areas: basic medical services, public health services, medical insurance (New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme), drug procurement and distribution, and integrated healthcare management. It also includes two major data resources: resident health records and electronic medical records, one healthcare dedicated network, and one health card. The "Grassroots Healthcare Institution Management Information System" includes the Grassroots Healthcare Institution Business Management Information System and the Municipal Data Center (Municipal Platform). This system directly serves grassroots residents and medical personnel, with primary users including residents, grassroots healthcare institutions, and administrative departments. It provides basic medical, public health, and drug management application systems for grassroots levels and enables interconnection with the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, medical insurance systems, and civil affairs assistance systems. It also facilitates the collection of health records, bidirectional referrals, and telemedicine consultations, and supports county-level integrated healthcare management.
Due to the scattered locations of Sichuan's various regions and the inconvenience of transportation and poor network conditions in many areas, the level of informatization is very low. How to build an economical, highly reliable information-based network platform to securely connect scattered rural healthcare units and municipal healthcare institutions is a significant challenge for the Sichuan Provincial Health Department.
Huawei utilizes UTM multi-function security gateways, providing essential security features such as firewalls and IPSec VPNs, thereby minimizing user procurement costs. Huawei firewalls offer active-standby dual-machine hot backup functionality, ensuring uninterrupted VPN links and business operations during failover, and supporting 3G backup links to maximize network reliability.
This project has established the first unified grassroots healthcare basic network platform covering all rural areas in Sichuan Province. It provides reliable technical support for the implementation of the national rural basic healthcare policy.
