May 10, 2005 Milwaukee, WI -- Time Warner Telecom has installed Ethernet Native LAN services for regional health care organization ProHealth Care at six locations throughout Waukesha County, Wisconsin. To help implement the services, the provider expanded its fiber presence into the cities of Oconomowoc and Mukwonago, where it is now offering fiber-based facility services for voice and high-speed data networking applications.
The health care organization contracted 12 native LAN circuits providing Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, configured into six point-to-point connections between three data centers and three additional health care facilities throughout the region.
"The Native LAN service's Ethernet handoff met our goal to eliminate ATM gear, along with the costs to maintain and administer the switches," explains Bill Bailey, ProHealth Care's enterprise architect. "Most everyone on our IT staff has Ethernet-protocol training and experience, compared to a couple of people who understood ATM. That change alone lifts a large administrative burden off our shoulders."
The organization says the Native LAN service's low latency and high capacity have benefited it in a number of ways.
"The bandwidth we're getting from Time Warner Telecom inspired us to review our IT infrastructure across discrete locations on an aggregate basis to eliminate redundant elements," continues Bailey. "The sub-millisecond performance has eliminated latency complaints we were getting before the implementation. That's particularly important when you consider that we need to move large data sets associated with our cardiology and radiology applications between sites. Even with the large data volumes patient exams generate, the Gig-E circuits still give us about 50% headroom to grow into."
"We've noticed the growing trend toward moving patient data among multiple locations to deliver better care," concludes Sandee Lammers, sales director for Time Warner Telecom in Milwaukee. "Not only can health care organizations like ProHealth Care traffic data to highly experienced specialists, but our Native LAN technology helps them more fully utilize their personnel and equipment to increase productivity and their return on assets."