Enloe Medical Center connects and tracks nearly 30,000 devices while saving 1,800 IT hours annually by expanding its Aruba ESP Network with EdgeConnect and Location Services
New SD-WAN network and real-time asset tracking ensure patient-centered healthcare leader can deliver next-generation care to residents across six counties
SAN JOSE, Calif. – January 30, 2023 – Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that Enloe Medical Center, a nationally-recognized, locally-governed, nonprofit, comprehensive healthcare facility based in Chico, California, is expanding its end-to-end Aruba network by adding Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN gateways and Aruba Location Services. The expansion ensures Enloe can continue delivering world-class patient care by doubling branch networking capacity to each of its nearly 30 locations, providing reliable high-performance connectivity, and permitting the efficient management of nearly 30,000 connected devices. The deployment also enables Enloe to rapidly track thousands of pieces of vital healthcare equipment while saving 1,800 IT hours annually via advanced network automation.
In a modern healthcare environment, where data, telehealth streaming, connected medical equipment, and mobility play critical roles, Enloe’s network is vital to supporting the institution’s ongoing tradition of innovation. This tradition includes being one of the few medical centers nationally – of any size – with an MRI Linear Accelerator, which requires network connectivity, for exceptionally precise cancer radiation treatments. With its new wired, wireless, and SD-WAN network Enloe can continue to innovate.
“Aruba ensures we can resiliently connect all of our healthcare providers, their devices, and our critical applications, like our extensive Epic electronic medical record (EMR) implementation, all of the time – guaranteeing access to whatever our staff needs, whenever they need it, so they can concentrate on treating their patients.”
“Our new EdgeConnect SD-WAN and location services solutions supply us the reliable and secure technologies we need to continue our long-standing commitment to patient-centric excellence.”
In addition, the capability to reduce IT overhead enterprise-wide enables re-investing in further healthcare innovation. “We provision and deploy 150 to 300 new devices monthly,” said Webb. “Using Aruba’s automation features, we’re able to re-direct IT time to higher-value, critical initiatives like supporting the development of a new 125,000 sq. ft.”
For its SD-WAN, Enloe has added EdgeConnect to its wireless solution, comprised of Aruba’s access points (APs) and mobility controllers. On the wired side, the institution has implemented Aruba’s CX Series switches for the data center core along with access and aggregation switches.
Asset tracking is accomplished by combining the location awareness resident in Enloe’s Aruba APs with Aruba Location Services and Aruba Tags.
“Aruba’s business-friendly location services solution empowers our non-technical supply department to own and manage the process for tagging and tracking assets,” Webb said. “What’s more, Aruba’s flexible and advanced technology enabled us to simply leverage our existing Wi-Fi infrastructure for asset tracking, rather than requiring a forklift upgrade.”
Enloe is also streamlining wired, wireless, and SD-WAN policy administration using Aruba’s integrated zero trust security capabilities. This includes rolling out Aruba Dynamic Segmentation along with Aruba ClearPass for network security policy management, as well as the ability to support consistent and automated policy-based network access control (NAC) across Enloe’s enterprises to support healthcare workers, administrative staff, and guests.
Moving forward, Enloe plans to evolve its future-ready network by adopting automated IT operations features using Aruba Central for comprehensive cloud-based artificial intelligence IT operations (AIOps) that provides AI-powered insights, workflow automation, and edge-to-cloud security while unifying wired, wireless, and SD-WAN management.
“Having worked with multiple networking companies, we value our ongoing partnership with Aruba as the best we’ve experienced by far,” noted Webb. “Aruba’s solutions perform as advertised, they’re issue-free, and they’re extremely agile. In short, they just work.”