Two years ago, healthcare providers and facilities had to make huge changes in order to adjust to the influx of Covid patients.

Many of these changes involved digitisation, as between the initial uncertainty of Covid transmission and on-and-off lockdowns, digital services went from optional to mandatory overnight. 

From telemedicine to patient portals, new technologies are still being deployed today to help the system fight back against the backlog of patients needing care, as well as deliver the improved and more seamless service that customers now expect.

This has meant that IoT device explosion is on the rise across the healthcare sector. In fact, Deloitte predicts that the IoMT market will grow in Middle East and Africa from R31 billion to 141billion by 2025.   

As healthcare organisations continue to introduce IoT devices to their operations, their digital success stories depend on one fundamental component – a reliable network.

Resilient and secure connectivity must underpin every institution’s digital roadmap, upholding and progressing the convergence of IT, patient care and operational efficiencies. So, just how do they achieve this?  

Step 1: Upgrading the network  

Many legacy networks that IT teams in the healthcare sector are pushed to work with were designed during a pre-COVID time where applications were static. These outdated networks not only create their own roadblocks, but trying to adapt them to support today’s demands can also result in huge operational issues.

An IT team tasked with scaling their network up to support a surge in users and devices across various locations would be faced with having to manually process every connection type and device if a network hasn’t been modernised.  

Fast forward to 2022 and the shift towards personalised healthcare and increased dependence on mobile devices and applications means that this type of process is simply no longer sustainable.

In order to support the surge of IoT devices, and unlock the opportunities they bring around autonomous, predictive and analytical capabilities – healthcare organisations must firstly upgrade and modernise their networks.  

Here, organisations should consider opting for a cloud-centric network architecture solution, as whether it is consumed in the cloud or on-premises, this will provide organisations with much needed agility for future scale and connectivity.  

On top of this, networks based on traditional VLAN architectures will struggle to accommodate huge amounts of IoT devices, so modernising WAN solutions with SD-WAN should be seen as the next step for healthcare organisations.

Offering greater efficiency and cost savings, hospitals and clinics can also opt for an approach that doesn’t involve the wholesale replacement of their current infrastructures, but rather look for options that coexist with current architectures.

Here, healthcare organisations can introduce network overlays such as EVPN/VXLAN alongside existing infrastructure to learn how to adapt these protocols to current and future environments.  

Step 2: Leveraging automation  

With a modern network in place and now set up for scale and connectivity, health organisations must then look towards leveraging the benefits of automation.  

As all these IoT devices churn out large quantities of health information, automation merged with other smart technologies such as machine learning can help turn into actionable insights that healthcare organisations can use to build new solutions. 

Here, simplified workflows can also help alleviate administrative burdens and redeploy precious time so that staff can focus on patient care.

From apps that help patients manage their care themselves, to online symptom checkers and e-triage AI tools, virtual agents that can carry out tasks in hospitals, or a bionic pancreas to help patients with diabetes, adding AI to your technology arsenal can greatly enhance patient care.

Of these AI applications, some help improve healthcare operations by optimising scheduling or bed management, others aid population health by predicting the risk of hospital admission or helping detect specific cancers early enabling intervention that can lead to better survival rates; and others even help optimise healthcare R&D and pharmacovigilance.

All of this can go a long way to help hospitals make better use of their resources in an age where they’re more stretched than ever. But it takes a strong and secure network to support this.  

Step 3: Security

While a modern network and the IoT devices and AI solutions it can support have the potential to transform healthcare in practice, the growing use of connective devices also poses increased risk for healthcare organisations.

In a hospital setting where staff, patients and visitors are always on the go, multiple new devices are constantly joining and leaving the network. Now, securing the network is more important than ever.  

The key to a secure network is visibility. This means that everything, from sensors to visitors phones, needs to be individually identified, secured and monitored. By ‘fingerprinting’ every device this way, any vulnerability can be spotted and addressed immediately before it is exploited. This level of nuance is also particularly vital in healthcare.

In life-or-death environments critical-care devices that need to run continuously can’t be treated the same way as those which can be disconnected if needed.

Instead, Zero Trust architectures ensure that all devices and users trying to access the network are identified and authenticated, before providing the least amount of access required through a predefined security policy.   

The digital transformation of our healthcare system is being driven by the benefits of a truly IoT-device connected environment. However, in order to unlock the promises of this future, it is fundamental that organisations have a network in place to support this.

By deploying a modern and secure network and leveraging automation, healthcare organisations can drive operational efficiencies, redeploy employee time and ultimately enhance patient care. 

The networks of yesterday are often rigid and difficult to reconfigure or manage. Faced with organisations’ growing expectations of their efficiency and ability to seamlessly support ever-more distributed workforces, the rapid growth of IoT devices, and the ever-present need to maintain security: networks are now in serious need of network modernisation.

Network modernisation can equip enterprises to address all manner of challenges – from operational to security – especially as they accelerate their digital transformation. In fact, in order to support today’s evolving business models, network modernisation isn’t just necessary it is vital.

When networks can’t keep up

Not only can poor networks lead to their own roadblocks but trying to adapt them to the new demands of today can also create serious operational challenges.

For instance, scaling networks up to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of users and devices across locations and connection types is a hugely manual process when attempted on a network that hasn’t been modernised – often leading to performance issues and unhappy users.

Combine this with scarce IT staffing resources and it means that all too frequently too much time and energy is wasted on basic moves, adds, and deletes – leaving few resources to focus on strategic business initiatives. Finally, without a strong network security foundation, protection gaps are also more likely.

Luckily there are multiple ways an organisation can modernise its networks now and create something that not only meets today’s expectations but can also be a bridge to the future.

5 principles to abide by

Network modernisation isn’t a destination but a journey – a continuous process that businesses must undertake.

With the onset of hybrid working, modern networks must now work equally well and integrate across the full spectrum of possible workplaces, from employee homes to offices and campuses, as well as data centres and the cloud. At the same time, they need to provide a new architectural approach that is edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven.

It is undoubtedly a big project for a business of any size, but it can be effectively managed by focusing on five key areas aimed at providing gains in performance, automation, security, and agility.

1. Connectivity and scale

Remote work, IoT and the new emerging business models of the post-pandemic world are creating hyper-distributed work environments. For older networks based on traditional VLAN architecture, this creates the scaling problem discussed previously – with networks struggling to accommodate the potentially huge number of users and devices spread across such a wide variety of locations.

This is why new protocols and architectures will be essential for scale and connectivity.

There are a few things that can be done to facilitate this. Firstly, choosing to use a cloud-native solution, whether your organisation consumes it in the cloud or on-premises, can add some much-needed agility and timeliness.

Alongside this, modernising WAN solutions with SD-WAN can be another powerful step, offering greater flexibility, efficiency, and cost savings.

The key is to select an approach that doesn’t require the wholesale replacement of current infrastructure, but to find solutions that can coexist with your current architecture.

2. AI-powered automation

Let’s face it, the scale of modern networks and the data they create goes far beyond anything we humans can monitor by ourselves let alone troubleshoot or optimise. This coupled with the scarcity of IT workers, means that teams are stretched thin.

The answer? Automation – or more specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered automation of operations, also known as AIOps.

AIOps will allow IT teams to automate repetitive time-consuming tasks, such as configuration management, while they focus on more strategic tasks. From Day Zero deployment to Day-N of ongoing management, AIOps offers a real and tangible way for organisations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their network operations.

So, what do businesses need to be aware of when implementing AIOps? Firstly, reassure staff. AIOps can be a major culture shift and may leave some staff worried about their jobs, so decision makers must assure their teams that automation is being brought in to help reduce the time and effort they must spend on mundane tasks, not replace them.

Following this, start small to test how AI solutions will work in your work environment. Remember, AI is useful in many situations, but it is by no means perfect – and you shouldn’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise.

3. Security

With today’s network having to accommodate ever-changing and diverse users and devices, effective and up-to-date security is absolutely vital – but legacy networks with manual processes can be prone to human error and vulnerabilities.

IT teams can counter this through the integration of network and security functions with Zero Trust Security and SASE frameworks.

The foundational principle of these frameworks is that access permissions are wholly independent of the method of connection.

Zero Trust ensures that all devices and users accessing a network are identified and authenticated before providing any amount of access through predefined security policies.

Organisations should insist that Zero Trust and SASE are built into their network solutions rather than simply added retroactively – providing consistent policies and control to enable the network to more easily discover, identify, and authenticate devices and users.

4. Flexibility and agility

Rapidly changing business objectives require a network that can quickly – and automatically—adjust to new or evolving conditions. Unfortunately, many organisations today are constrained by a patchwork of disparate network management solutions – creating operational friction and dangerous siloes.

Cloud-native solutions can not only provide a single-point of visibility and control across wired, wireless, and WAN, but also enable organisations to keep their competitive edge by delivering continuous updates and new functionality.

If your organization hasn’t begun implementing cloud for network management, start small and be selective – pick a project or part of your network that would benefit from centralised cloud control and visibility.

A good place to start is remote work environments, where creating the same experience for hybrid workers as those in the office is paramount.

5. Employ as a service

With budgets tight, many organisations face the challenge of how to finance the rapid acquisition, implementation, and management of new network solutions.

Fortunately, the emergence of alternative consumption and deployment models, such as self-delivered or managed services, means this challenge might soon become a thing of the past. The network-as-a-service (NaaS) approach delivers new network solutions quickly while also letting organisations consider their budgets or adjust scalability according to need.

Through NaaS models, organisations can alleviate the burden on IT teams and the time taken to taken for network planning and budgeting by delivering hardware, software, and services in a monthly subscription.

As a first step, evaluate the potential that a flexible financing and subscription approach can offer your organisation and whether your vendor has the resources to support a significant as-a-service model – including whether these are standard service offerings, or they support customisation.

Why is modernising your network is worth it?

Network modernisation might, on the face of it, appear to be simply an exercise in updating your current infrastructure – but it is so much more. It is an essential ongoing process that not only keeps your business up to date with the latest technology but provides an agile foundation to advance your ability to implement digital transformation by taking advantage of new approaches to your security, management, architecture, and delivery.