"Hospitals need an advanced, green, low-carbon, and future-oriented high-speed network that truly becomes the connection base of smart hospitals."
----- Song Erwei is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
President of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenshan Central Hospital
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (The Second Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University) is a hospital under the National Health Commission, founded in 1835, and is the birthplace of Western medicine and Western medicine education in China, with a history of 187 years. The great revolutionary pioneer Dr. Sun Yat-sen once studied medicine here and engaged in the revolutionary movement under the name of "Yat-sen". On May 26, 2021, with the strong support of the Shenzhen and Shanwei municipal governments, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University was officially put into operation, with Academician Song Erwei, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, dean of Sun Yat-sen Medical College of Sun Yat-sen University, and president of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, as the president, and Zheng Yiqing, director of the Institute of Hearing and Speech of Sun Yat-sen University and winner of the Guangdong Medical Doctor Award, as the executive dean. In October 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Health Commission, and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine jointly announced the list of the fourth batch of national regional medical center construction projects.
Fig.1 Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenshan Central Hospital
Key transformation, smart hospitals find new opportunities
At the beginning of construction, the hospital focused on the development of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular, orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology pediatrics, gastroenterology, cranial surgery and other specialties, and planned to build a modern tertiary general hospital integrating medical treatment, scientific research, teaching, and preventive health care functions. At the same time, it is equipped with digital signage information display, medical device data return, ward call system and other networks, which are distributed in dozens of departments and departments in the hospital. If various types of networks are independently networked, it will lead to more difficult wiring and construction, and the IT network management and upgrade of the hospital will be extremely complex. In addition, in the traditional hospital network scheme, the network cable only has an effective transmission distance of 100 meters, which leads to the network structure of various departments and departments need to converge layer by layer, occupying a large amount of floor wiring space, and at the same time, the energy consumption of weak motor room equipment and air conditioning and refrigeration also increases, and the maintenance and energy consumption expenditure of the computer room make the operating cost of the hospital overloaded. More importantly, in the traditional network construction scheme, independent siloed networks will form information islands, resulting in information isolation and inability to share. Therefore, it has become an urgent need for hospitals to run data on a network with multi-service convergence, simple architecture, flexible scalability, and ultra-high bandwidth.
- From decentralized to centralized, from network islands to information integration, through the construction of a unified hospital data center platform, the medical information of the whole process of patients can be obtained in real time, including all data such as outpatient, hospitalization, and physical examination, rather than a single system data.
- Transform from traditional energy-intensive networks to green, sustainable, and energy-efficient networks.
- By streamlining the network architecture, the network layer is reduced, and the workload and difficulty of daily hospital network operation and maintenance are reduced. Make full use of the introduction of new technologies to gradually achieve the goal of building a green and low-carbon hospital network with large bandwidth, easy management, low failure, and gradually achieve the goal.
Challenges ahead, "smart hospitals" have a good solution
In order to realize the vision of building a new platform and building a smart hospital, Shenshan Central Hospital finally chose a "good solution" after comparing various network solutions: Huawei's F5G all-optical network solution, which implements all-optical gigabit broadband access based on passive optical technology and Wi-Fi 6. Optical fibers carry a variety of services, which can smoothly upgrade bandwidth in the future, from gigabit to 10 gigabit in the room, from GPON in the pipeline to 10 GPON, and even to 50 GPON. The one-time deployment of optical fiber brings a variety of possibilities for the development of hospital digital services in the future.
In response to the national "Gigabit Optical Network" strategy, Shenshan Central Hospital has become the first "all-optical hospital" in eastern Guangdong to adopt F5G technology to build a network. So compared with other solutions, what is the magic of F5G that can stand out among many solutions and help Shenshan Central Hospital leave a strong mark on the blueprint of "smart hospital"?
Compared with traditional network solutions, F5G all-optical networks have the following features:
1. The essential innovation brought by the transmission medium
The biggest difference between F5G all-optical networks and traditional networks is that optical fiber and passive optical splitting are used as transmission methods to the greatest extent, so the data transmission speed is faster, the latency is lower, the distance is longer, and the capacity is larger. With these features, Shenshan Central Hospital can fundamentally improve the overall performance and performance of the network, ensure the actual user experience while ensuring network coverage, so as to meet the needs of multiple scenarios and high concurrency.
Optical fiber is composed of extremely transparent glass fibers and the material that surrounds it, which is inherently green and environmentally friendly. On the one hand, compared with traditional copper wires, optical fiber transmission process achieves lower power consumption, lower pollution and less electromagnetic interference. On the other hand, due to the corrosion-resistant chemical properties, the laying of optical fiber does not require frequent cable replacement like copper wires, which greatly reduces energy consumption, and once deployed, 30 years worry-free.
Figure 2: Advantages of optical fiber over traditional network cables
2. Innovate network architecture from stacked to flat
The traditional two-layer architecture of "core layer + aggregation layer + access layer" is optimized into a simplified architecture of "core layer + access layer", which effectively reduces the network layer and extends optical fibers directly to wards, doctors' desks, and any corner of the campus, so as to evenly distribute optical signals to the hospital.
Figure 3 Comparison of network architectures
3. One optical fiber network carries multi-service deployment innovation
For different network services, the F5G all-optical network solution is finely divided, and network services are divided into intranet, extranet, and equipment security network, realizing refined management of service networks. Among them, the intranet mainly serves various departments, ensuring that medical personnel can conduct real-time and efficient telemedicine consultation and academic exchanges, and ensure that patient medical records, examination results, diagnosis suggestions and other information are transmitted to the doctor in a timely manner, so as to improve the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosis; The extranet is open to patients and their families, so that patients can self-register for medical appointments based on Wi-Fi 6 and enjoy leisure and entertainment during hospitalization. The equipment security network is mainly used for all kinds of video terminal equipment and monitoring platform to serve the intelligent and automatic management of network equipment.
Figure 4 F5G all-optical network architecture diagram of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital and Shenshan Central Hospital
Resonance at the same frequency, wisdom construction has a new look
Thanks to the F5G all-optical network, Shenshan Central Hospital has a new digital look.
Patient visits are more efficient. In the past, patients came to Shenshan Central Hospital for treatment, they needed to queue up for registration, and after the treatment was completed, they had to queue up to pay, queue for inspection, and wait for the examination results to be printed, which was not only cumbersome but also had a long time cycle. Specifically, the F5G all-optical network shortens the time from "entering the hospital" to "completing diagnosis and treatment" from 45 minutes to 15 minutes. In terms of film reading, it breaks the characteristics of relying on experienced medical personnel in the past, so that the system can actively read the images according to 7×24 hours, for 1G CT images, it only takes 0.4 seconds to load in standard mode, and for 2.5G PET-CT group reading, it only takes 2.5 seconds to load in standard mode, so as to achieve second-level reading.
The construction cost and operation and maintenance expenses of smart hospitals are lower. During the construction process, all smart terminal AP devices support Wi-Fi 6 wireless connection, which greatly improves the efficiency and stability of the hospital's network coverage, and reduces the possibility of signal interference and network congestion. In terms of operation and maintenance expenditure, smart hospitals reduce the need for manual intervention and reduce labor costs through automated and intelligent systems. These changes not only reduce the construction cost of the hospital, but also effectively release human resources and improve the work efficiency of medical staff—the F5G all-optical network solution can effectively increase the network bandwidth by 3-5 times, reduce the equipment room space by 60%, reduce the construction cost of the entire network by 35%, and make the daily operation and maintenance workload less than one-tenth of the original.
In the future, evolution will be more convenient and scalable. In future upgrades and expansions, Shenshan Central Hospital can more flexibly adjust the network architecture according to needs, without the need for large-scale renovation projects, which greatly saves time and costs. More importantly, the F5G all-optical network provides the potential for continuous evolution of the intelligent construction of Shenshan Central Hospital, which can easily cope with various challenges and maintain its leading position with the continuous development of technology and changing needs. This continuous evolution enables the intelligent construction of Shenshan Central Hospital to always keep pace with the times and meet the changing needs.
Li Dongfang, Vice President of Shenshan Central Hospital of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, shared the construction experience of All-Optical Hospital of Shenshan Central Hospital at the 2024 South China Hospital Information Network Conference, and introduced that with the help of the scientific and technological advantages of Sun Yat-sen University Headquarters and the opportunity of hospital reconstruction and expansion, F5G all-optical network, as an important landing technology of the "smart hospital" of Shenshan Central Hospital, has promoted the full-scene intelligence of hospital diagnosis and treatment, service and management, improved the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment and the medical experience of patients, and built a high-quality "East Guangdong Regional Medical Center" A wise role model.
Huawei's F5G all-optical network has become a solid foundation for the digital transformation of future hospitals, driving the medical industry to show unprecedented potential for informatization and digital transformation.