UK’s Best Hospital of 2007 Improves Medical Services with Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays

PRLog (Press Release) - May 12, 2009 -
Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi "Power-Play" that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announced today that the world-renowned Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital NHS Trust (RJAH Hospital) located in Shropshire, England has selected Xirrus’ Wi-Fi Arrays to be deployed Hospital-wide. Xirrus was selected over other Wi-Fi vendors to replace RJAH Hospital’s legacy controller-based Wi-Fi network because only the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array’s distributed architecture is capable of providing the coverage, bandwidth, and RF control to support all the medical personnel and applications. The Xirrus high performance Wi-Fi network will provide patient information, prescription services, e-Mail, web browsing, and guest access today with the capability of supporting VoWi-Fi, RFID tracking, and Wireless CCTV in the near future.

RJAH Hospital is an NHS Hospital specializing in bone and joint disorders along with spinal disorders and metabolic disorders affecting muscular development. With a worldwide reputation for innovation and research, RJAH Hospital was voted Best Hospital by patients in the 2007 National Healthcare Commission Survey (United Kingdom) and had the highest score of all NHS Hospitals for Overall Rate of Care Received in the 2007 National Inpatient Survey (United Kingdom).

“At RJAH, we work hard to ensure our patients receive the absolute best care possible,” said Richard Jones, IT Systems Support Engineer at RJAH. “With all the medical advances pertaining to wireless applications and services, we found our existing 802.11b/g centralized controller architecture had several problems related to interference, coverage, and user capacity. We did not have control over the RF management and shaping – we wanted a visual representation of the area each Access Point was covering and what was going on within that RF environment.”

“We selected Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays, along with their Management System, to give us the desired RF control and to drastically increase the amount of wireless bandwidth distributed among our staff,” continued Richard. “Unlike other vendors, Xirrus designed their products to include multiple radios with directional antennas, thereby increasing the RF range and shaping capabilities, making it far easier and more cost efficient to deploy, manage, and maintain a wireless network. With the Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays, we will have the performance needed to roll out patient information and prescription drug services in order to operate more efficiently and improve medical services and patient care.”

"RJAH Hospital has been adding and tweaking their existing Wi-Fi network for some time, but with very little improvement to the overall service,” said Chris Allen, Regional Manager (UK) at Xirrus. “To cover the areas required, the Hospital would have needed to install countless more access points, cable runs, and workgroup switches. Deploying a Xirrus Wi-Fi network has given them access to an amount of Wi-Fi bandwidth previously unobtainable; allowing support for more users on both 802.11a and b/g, along with complete control of the users within the Wi-Fi network.”

"We are constantly coming across organizations with Wi-Fi networks that were deployed a few years ago as an overlay to the wired network—supported a small number of clients accessing online information wirelessly,” said David Kynaston, European Business Development Manager at Wireless LAN Source. “However, these same networks are brought to their knees today with the significant rise of both Wi-Fi applications and devices—from prescription drug services at the bedside to streaming video in patient rooms. Only Xirrus planned for the success of Wi-Fi by designing a system that operates like a cellular network with sectored directional antennas for greater coverage and built like a workgroup switch with distributed intelligence for greater throughout and security.”

Wireless LAN Source
Wireless LAN Source Ltd was founded in 2003 and is a specialist provider of wireless networking equipment and antennas. Since its inception, Wireless LAN Source has experienced year on year growth of 100% and has established itself as the leading provider of solutions and hardware in the wireless networking arena. For more information, please visit wlansource.co.uk.

Xirrus Press Contact
John Merrill
E-mail: john.merrill@xirrus.com
Phone: +1.805.262.1644



About Xirrus
Xirrus, the only Wi-Fi “Power-Play”, manufacturers the Wi-Fi Array® architecture that displaces both overlay Wi-Fi offerings and switched Ethernet to the desktop. The Wi-Fi Array integrates 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 802.11abg+n radios coupled to a high-gain directional antenna system into a single device along with an onboard multi-gigabit switch, Wi-Fi controller, firewall, dedicated Wi-Fi threat sensor, and an embedded spectrum analyzer. The Wi-Fi Array provides more than enough bandwidth, security, and control to replace switched Ethernet to the desktop as the primary network connection. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array delivers the most coverage, bandwidth, throughput, and user density on a per device and per system basis than anything else available on the market today - resulting in a solution that uses 75% fewer devices, cabling, switch ports, power, space, and installation time compared with any other offering.

Xirrus is a privately-held company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. For more information, please visit www.xirrus.com.

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