SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Ruckus Wireless™, the smart mobile Internetworking company, announced that Clear Choice Healthcare, a health care management company, selected Ruckus advanced "Smart Wi-Fi" products and technology for its nine skilled nursing and assisted living facilities throughout Florida. Clear Choice also operates a skilled nursing facility in Denver, which will also utilize the Ruckus system.
According to Kevin Neighbor, IT Director at Clear Choice Healthcare, the company's needs for Wi-Fi grew from the federal government's requirements for hospitals and health care facilities to transition to Electronic Medical Records (EMR).
"The entire healthcare industry is undergoing a major transformation to the use of Electronic Medical Records, making the need for reliable, high-performance Wi-Fi in facilities like ours critical," said Neighbor. "Doctors and nurses are now relying on mobile laptop carts to access EMR and other software and web-based applications from any room or corner of our facilities – for them, an always-on, robust and far-reaching Wi-Fi signal is crucial. With Ruckus, we've been able to meet their requirements, and then some."
Clear Choice has 1,250 employees across 10 locations along with the company's corporate offices in Melbourne, FL. Each facility has approximately 120 beds in 20,000 square feet of space. To unwire these locations, Clear Choice purchased 42 ZoneFlex 7962 dual-band indoor 802.11n access points for its 10 facilities. Neighbor will also use the Ruckus FlexMaster remote Wi-Fi management software from the corporate office as a single point of configuration, event and firmware management system.
"A lot of our patients have their own laptops and PCs, and like to get online to send emails or interact with friends and family at home using video software like Skype," he said. "We also use rehabilitative software with patients in some of the therapy rooms. A reliable Wi-Fi connection offers big benefits to all of these types of applications."
He also explained that with so many medical devices and microwaves in use all the time, and with thick firewalls in every other room, the environment at each facility is very hostile to Wi-Fi.
With limited IT staff and budgetary constraints, Neighbor was tasked with finding a next-generation 802.11n wireless LAN (WLAN) system that could overcome the problems with interference present in each facility, and which delivered far-reaching, reliable connections required for each building's layout. After evaluating a several different WLAN vendors, he turned to Ruckus.
Range and Reliability Make Ruckus the Clear Choice for Wi-Fi
Previously, some of the Clear Choice facilities had wireless connectivity through sporadic placement of Cisco access points (APs), which couldn't provide the range and reliability required. Also, according to Neighbor, the Cisco equipment wasn't turn-key. "I wanted to go into each facility and take a cookie cutter approach to the network," he said. "I estimated it would have taken me to the end of this year to install Cisco systems in all the facilities – but I wanted to have this project finished in a couple of months. With Ruckus, I can."
Neighbor said expense was also a major factor in his wireless choice. "Other vendors evaluated were consistently 60-80 percent more expensive than the Ruckus ZoneFlex system, and sometimes much more," he said. According to Clear Choice, the Xirrus XN-8, for example, provided an eight-radio static, sectorized array but was limited to 100 milliwatts per radio with only three radios configurable to 2.4GHz. In a dramatically smaller form factor, a single Ruckus ZoneFlex 7962 priced at $999 with a dynamic intelligent antenna array delivered same coverage as the eight-radio Xirrus XN-8 priced at $7,500.
The ZoneFlex WLAN systems are built with Ruckus' patented dynamic beamforming, one of the newest breakthroughs in Wi-Fi technology that constantly forms and directs Wi-Fi signals over the best performing signal path, continually steering signals around obstacles and interference that can degrade performance. Dynamic beamforming uses constant feedback from the client to ensure that the path selected is performing properly using standard acknowledgements built into the standard 802.11 protocol. The result is an adaptive system that provides better performance and longer range, and automatically adapts to environmental changes – like those present in Clear Choice's facilities – without IT staff having to perform any manual tuning.
"With a reliable Wi-Fi network that's available from virtually anywhere in the facility, we'll be able to provide a real value to our patients – not to mention our doctors, nurses and staff," Neighbor said. "Ultimately we want to create computer kiosks our patients can use to stay connected to friends and family around the country. Thanks to Ruckus, we'll be able to do this sooner than later. I'm excited to discover all the possibilities this technology will open up for us."
About Ruckus Wireless, Inc.
Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Ruckus Wireless is supplier of advanced wireless systems for the mobile Internetworking market. The company markets and manufactures a wide range of indoor and outdoor "Smart Wi-Fi" products for mobile operators, broadband service providers and corporate enterprises around the world. Ranked as the top telecom company in the 2009 Inc. Magazine 500 list and named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Ruckus Wireless has realized dramatic growth. Since 2006, revenue and shipments have grown by over 1000 percent. Ruckus invented, and has patented, innovative state-of-the-art wireless technology that steers signals around obstacles and interference. This unique capability extends signal range and ensures consistent reliable distribution of delay-sensitive multimedia content and services over standard 802.11 Wi-Fi. The company has shipped over 2 million Smart Wi-Fi systems around the world and has raised $51 million in funding from premier investors such as Sequoia Capital, Focus Ventures, Sutter Hill, Motorola, T-Ventures, Telus Ventures and Firelake Capital. The company is led by Ms. Selina Lo, president and chief executive officer. For more information, visit Ruckus Wireless at http://www.ruckuswireless.com.
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