Central Hospital of Wuhan Establishes All-Optical Infrastructure for a Digital Twin Hospital

In August 2023, along the shores of Yangchun Lake in Wuhan, a groundbreaking “digital twin hospital” emerged — the Yangchunhu Campus of the Central Hospital of Wuhan.

Construction began in May 2021, and after two years of meticulous planning and design, the campus officially opened in August 2023. It integrates pervasive smart and digital technologies into every process, service, and scenario within the hospital.

In particular, in the realm of smart management, the hospital leverages digital twin technology to replicate the physical hospital in a digital space, creating a scalable, proportionate "digital hospital." This innovation makes the Yangchunhu Campus the first digital twin hospital in Hubei and a national leader in smart healthcare.

An Experience-Centric Smart Upgrade

Founded in the year 1880, Central Hospital of Wuhan is now a large modern tertiary hospital that integrates medical treatment, scientific research, teaching, disease prevention, and training.

As China puts more effort into healthcare digitalization, many hospitals are upgrading and starting to use digital technology to provide smart healthcare services.

The Yangchunhu Campus aims to build a first-class smart hospital in China, offering patients a digital healthcare assistant and intelligent navigation services that span both online and offline, as well as in-hospital and out-of-hospital experiences.

Key innovations include its smart operations management center, smart pharmacy (which integrates stock management and distribution), smart ward, and smart logistics systems. These smart applications embody the move toward digitalization and intelligence in all service processes. They also improve the efficiency of hospital workflows, and greatly enhance the experience of patients.

Digital Twin Hospital Based on an All-Optical Network

The intelligent operations management center is the "smart hub" of the Yangchunhu Campus. It collects data from across the hospital, including building environments, equipment, and patient treatment data, and moves it into cyberspace using digital twin technology.

With this system, staff in the management center can monitor hospital operations in real time—from large-scale equipment to utilities like electricity, gas, water, heating, and cooling. Potential operational risks are monitored and classified using intelligent early-warning mechanisms. This enables unified hospital management and one-click emergency response through a single control screen.

Digital twin technology imposes higher requirements on networks, including high scalability, low latency, and precise timing. Many innovative smart services require a high bandwidth and concurrent network access. With a total building area of 230,000 square meters and 1,000 beds, the Yangchunhu Campus has a large scale. This means that network O&M would be complex if a traditional network solution were used. The intranet, extranet, and device network need to be integrated for central and simplified O&M.

This is exactly what the Huawei FTTO solution can do. As a result, the Yangchunhu Campus of Central Hospital of Wuhan chose Huawei's FTTO solution to build the network foundation for the digital twin hospital. This solution has the following features:

First, in terms of network architecture, the Huawei FTTO solution uses the simplified and innovative 2-layer POL networking architecture to carry multiple types of access devices (ONUs). The split ratio can be determined by application scenarios, and ONUs can be deployed in bulk to implement unified wired and wireless coverage.

Second, in terms of multi-network convergence, the FTTO hospital network is flexibly designed. Four OLTs are deployed on the intranet to connect wired and wireless intranets. Two OLTs are deployed on the extranet and device network, respectively, to meet the requirements of various devices such as video, access control, and phone devices. Type B dual-homing protection is provided for all XGS-PON ONUs for high bandwidth.

Third, in terms of simplified O&M, the Huawei eSight NMS can be used to implement unified O&M management, visualize the topology, alarms, and running indicators, and deliver policy configurations with one click. This not only reduces O&M costs, but also simplifies O&M.

The all-optical hospital network is like building a high-speed “smart” highway for hospital data — ensuring seamless connectivity while providing dedicated lanes for different services, thus avoiding mutual interference and ensuring smooth, efficient operations.