Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland teaching hospital: Digital transformation in healthcare

Hospitals work digital

“As early as 2012, it was clear that moving forward meant embracing further digital cooperation with other hospitals,” says Tim van Toledo, Project and Programme Manager at Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland. “However, our connections lacked the necessary capacity to make this possible. It was also clear that the lack of sufficient network bandwidth was having a ripple effect on the rest of our ICT landscape. While connections are key, digital cooperation also involves a parallel need for more storage capacity, for example. This is due to the data-intensive nature of sharing images and reports with other healthcare institutions. 

24 x 7 operational infrastructure supports healthcare

Eurofiber delivered a fully configured fiber-optic ring that employs DWDM technology with 40 Gb/s bandwidth between the two hospitals (Franciscus Gasthuis in Rotterdam and Vlietland in Schiedam) and Dataplace’s datacenter in Rotterdam. The datacenter of Dataplace, a sister company of Eurofiber, serves as an interface with other parties. All the locations are connected in a fully redundant configuration with physically separated routes in a ring, ensuring a continuously operational infrastructure for the hospital 24/7. Eurofiber was also asked to provide multiple internet services configured to ensure full redundancy for the Patient Care Portal, the Cloud services and WiFi at the hospital.

With the fiber optic network ready for the future

Ready for the future, Eurofiber's high-speed network infrastructure enables the introduction of new applications. Van Toledo: “Various companies specialising in medical solutions, such as MRI scans, have developed in-house Cloud solutions, which in turn leads to increased data traffic. This fiber-optic network ensures we’re well prepared for this.”