Guiqian International General Hospital Works with Huawei to Build a Smart F5G All-Optical Healthcare Network

Network upgrade and reconstruction play a significant role in improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. As stated in the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Health Informatization, China is dedicated to building an intensive Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based infrastructure support system, improving the ICT-based national health standard system, deepening the "Internet Plus healthcare" service system, and consolidating the network and data security assurance system. An advanced and value-oriented network is the key to ensuring high-quality and scalable ICT-based construction in a hospital.

Based in Guizhou, Southwest China, Guiqian International General Hospital is a large grade-A tertiary hospital that integrates medical care, teaching, scientific research, and preventive healthcare services. It covers an area of 20 hectares, with 450,000 square meters in floorspace. It has advanced medical equipment and more than 100 medical experts. The hospital also passed the national maturity assessment of healthcare information interconnection standardization in 2020, ranking the first in Guizhou, China. After the new inpatient building C was put into use, another 1500 beds were added, further expanding the hospital's diagnosis and treatment space and enhancing the healthcare service capabilities of Guizhou.

To provide high-quality and efficient medical services for the people of Guizhou and get the most out of hospital informatization, Guiqian International General Hospital worked with Huawei to build an all-optical hospital using the fifth-generation fixed network (F5G) technology in 2022. The legacy network was reconstructed and upgraded, giving both doctors and patients a more premium experience.

Building an All-Optical Network Foundation for Smart Hospitals

Since its establishment, Guiqian International General Hospital has many "firsts" in Guizhou, including the first da Vinci Surgical System, the first renal autotransplant, and the first precision medical center. To help promote the development of healthcare services in Guizhou, the hospital implements the strategic layout of a "1+8+N" three-level healthcare service network for smart hospitals.

As Guiqian International General Hospital develops, its patients and types of services continue to increase, raising higher requirements on network bearing capabilities. In the conventional network solution, more network cables and cable troughs need to be added, complicating cabling and campus management. To resolve this issue, a simplified network is required.

Guiqian International General Hospital lacked professional internal network maintenance resources. This resulted in complex and inefficient O&M and a long service adjustment period. In this case, a network with high efficiency and easy O&M is required to facilitate quick response of multiple systems and improve healthcare efficiency.

As ICT-based applications surge in Guiqian International General Hospital, a large amount of data is generated from the medical imaging system. Therefore, a flexible and evolvable network featuring high bandwidth, low latency, and high reliability is needed to meet new requirements in the future.

Thanks to its mature ecological industry chain, the innovative F5G all-optical network has distinct advantages in network architecture, energy consumption, security, service bearing capability, and O&M management, providing powerful support for the network upgrade of smart hospitals. F5G-based next-generation hospital networks featuring high bandwidth, low latency, and all-optical connections are helping build a smart healthcare service system. Combined with technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and big data, the system achieves efficient transmission of diagnosis and treatment data, and significantly improves medical services.

Joining Hands with Huawei to Build an F5G-based All-Optical Hospital

To meet network upgrade requirements, Huawei uses the fiber-to-the-office (FTTO) solution to reshape the network architecture for Guiqian International General Hospital. The solution implements unified, efficient monitoring and management of the intranet, extranet, and device network in the hospital, simplifying network O&M, as well as delivering higher efficiency at lower costs.

In addition, there are fewer network layers, improving network reliability and scalability, as well as building an F5G-based all-optical campus network featuring simplified architecture, easy evolution, and smart O&M.

In line with the trend of fiber-in and copper-out, Guiqian International General Hospital chose the Huawei FTTO solution featuring the F5G-based XGS-PON/GPON technology for future evolution. This solution simplifies the conventional three-layer (core+aggregation+access) network into a two-layer (core+access) network. The intermediate aggregation devices are replaced with passive optical splitters, which can be flexibly deployed based on the site environment without auxiliary facilities such as extra-low voltage (ELV) rooms, cabinets, and power supplies. This reduces the power consumption of the entire network. Moreover, the Huawei FTTO solution uses the innovative point-to-multipoint architecture to extend optical fibers to rooms, reducing horizontal cabling space and weight, and improving deployment efficiency.

To meet service requirements in different scenarios, Guiqian International General Hospital adopted flexible device configuration solutions. On the hospital intranet, one EA5800-X15 optical line terminal (OLT) is deployed with more than 600 P603E optical network units (ONUs, 8xGE) and EG8240H5 ONUs (4xGE+2xPOTS) to meet the high bandwidth requirements of the radiology department, wards, and offices, ensuring efficient, low-latency service transmission. One EA5800-X7 OLT and more than 300 EG8040C ONUs (4xGE) are deployed on the hospital extranet to ensure proper running of services such as the hospital Internet, library knowledge management platform, and videoconferencing system. On the hospital device network, one EA5800-X7 OLT and 72 EA5821 ONUs (24xGE) supporting power over Ethernet (PoE) are deployed to carry services in the intelligent ELV system, including public address, access control, building control, and video security. With flexible replacement of OLT service boards and ONUs, the F5G all-optical network supports flexible evolution for the next decade.

In terms of O&M management, the Huawei FTTO solution replaces active devices with passive optical splitters. eSight, the network management software, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to centrally manage wired and wireless devices on the entire network, authenticate access of personnel and assets in a unified manner, and quickly locate faults. This effectively reduces the device failure rate and ensures the security and reliability of network services, helping Guiqian International General Hospital reduce costs and improve efficiency of network management.

Promoting High-Quality Development of Smart Hospitals and
Building a New Healthcare Benchmark in Guizhou

The F5G-based all-optical smart hospital features a simple architecture, easy evolution, and intelligent O&M, helping promote the smart development of the healthcare industry. It not only provides high-quality and efficient treatment for patients, but also meets the development requirements of Building C of Guiqian International General Hospital. With wide applications in various scenarios, such as HD CT image reading, hospital IoT, diagnosis, treatment, and office, the F5G all-optical network provides a new experience of fast deployment and highly reliable transmission over one fiber for ICT-based hospital construction, promoting the high-quality development of diagnosis and treatment services.

After in-depth discussion and collaboration with Huawei, Guiqian International General Hospital has built a future-oriented F5G all-optical network base with higher service quality and efficiency, setting a benchmark for smart hospitals and providing a reference for the transformation and upgrade of the healthcare industry. In the future, Huawei will further strengthen talent investment and technical research in the healthcare industry, and promote the improvement of healthcare service quality and efficiency to better safeguard people's health.