Case Study

RSS

This case study chronicles how Florida Hospital lowered its cellular coverage costs by 50% over conventional solutions by leveraging a cellular-over-LAN in-building coverage solution.

As the largest non-profit healthcare system in the United States, Florida Hospital encompasses over 6,000,000 square feet of medical facilities, and manages 2,000 patient beds. Like all hospitals, Florida Hospital was challenged to find a cost-effective infrastructure solution for their mid-sized Kissimmee building, which lacked connectivity for cellular services due to dense construction that prevented signals from entering the building. With employees increasingly dependent on their mobile devices for everything from real-time access to lab results to physician consults on the go, in-building coverage was a necessity.

By 2010, physicians were complaining about the lack of cellular and data coverage in a 150,000 square foot facility on the Kissimmee campus. With limited-to-no coverage, staff members were unable to depend on company sponsored mobile devices to perform their jobs and began to use personal devices from other operators. The IT team realized that an in-building coverage infrastructure would be needed to boost productivity and ensure hospital stakeholders were satisfied with the corporate service plan.

Initially, the Kissimmee building was considered too small to justify the deployment of a full scale fiber/coax based Distributed Antenna System (DAS). DAS installations typically require wall and ceiling penetration, and new cabling to be deployed for cellular service delivery. In clinical areas of healthcare facilities this necessitates infection control procedures which adds cost and time to the project. Administrators could not afford to shut down the building for a long installation timeframe and the IT department could not incur the additional costs associated with such a deployment.

Lastly, it was important that Florida Hospital invest in a flexible infrastructure that would enable adoption of the emerging services in the future, as well as a solution that was flexible in terms of adapting coverage with any changes to floor plan and staffing. Access This Content To Read This Case Study In Its Entirety.