Hospital de Amor uses HPE Aruba Networking Wi-Fi 6 to improve patient experience

Formerly known as Hospital do Câncer de Barretos, the institution offers free high-speed simultaneous connection for up to 2,500 patients

HOUSTON, Texas – May 31, 2023 – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced Hospital de Amor in the town of Barretos, São Paulo state, Brazil, has implemented Wi-Fi 6 connectivity for patients hospitalized in the rehabilitation and in the clinical/surgical hospitalization sectors. Now up to 2,500 personal devices can be connected to the network at the same time for patients to talk to family, read websites, listen to music, or watch videos while recovering from cancer treatment. The Wi-Fi architecture is from HPE Aruba Networking and was deployed in the Network as a Service (NaaS) model.

"Our patients are treated through SUS, the Brazilian government-run public health care system. Most of them are in prolonged treatment away from family and friends and are not able to afford the costs of an internet data package to use during their stay in hospital. That's why this initiative means much more than offering distractions, it's in line with our proposal to use technology to enhance patient care and improve their experience. We look at people, not the disease," says Caio Queiroz, Network Administrator at Hospital de Amor.

Wilson Silva, a system analyst at the institution, adds that this is particularly true in the case of some patients who stay up to two years in the hospital without returning home. The executive comments that the sales department was also included in the project, benefiting and offering greater mobility to 4,000 employees, who can now access the network not only through the institution's laptops, but also through their own tablets and smartphones. As a result, internal communication was optimized with a corporate social network that became the institution's main interaction and communication tool.

According to Douglas Vieira, the hospital's IT manager, the next phase will provide Wi-Fi 6 to other areas and should be finalized in the upcoming months, covering a total of 43,8 thousand square meters.

"4G doesn't always work inside the hospital, but now Wi-Fi 6 reaches patients, visitors, and staff with a speed close to 5G, from 300 to 400 Megabits per second. All for free. This showcases the humanization of treatment and the technical superiority of the project, which is already prepared to support IoT - Internet of Things - in hospital environments in the future,” says Isac Sartori Gomes, network and telecommunications engineer at Network Consult. The company is a partner of HPE Aruba Networking and deployed the solutions.

The solutions used include 40 HPE Aruba Networking Instant-On AP-22 Wi-Fi 6 access points in place of previous 10-year-old equipment that no longer had technical support and needed refreshing. This type of problem will not occur again, because as the implementation model was through an as-a-service model, the equipment will be updated with an appropriate frequency so that the network is always up to date and prepared for new technologies that will be developed over the years. Network Consult will be responsible for managing this refresh, the hospital will not need to spend any time on it.

Besides the main deployment, the hospital's minimally invasive surgery training center (Ircad) was also covered. It is the largest training center of its kind in the entire continent and has the most modern structure for this medical specialization amongst the Latin American countries. The more than 7,600 square meters of area received, also in the NaaS model, 14 Wi-Fi 6 access points, 5 HPE Aruba Networking Instant-On 48-port POE switches.

According to a recent IDC study that has surveyed more than 1,000 executives around the world, the main reason they choose network as a service deployment include: ease of incorporating new technologies; faster deployment of new features and functionalities; and reduced maintenance and support costs.

"Having our technology chosen by an institution that is a reference in healthcare to help it offer more comfort to patients is an honor for us. Fundamentally, technology serves people, as this case demonstrates. We will continue to promote this vision in whatever sector our connectivity solutions are deployed” concluded Antenor Nogara, country manager in Brazil, HPE Aruba Networking.      

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