• February 05, 2007
• Articles
• Joy Milkowski

Patient care isn’t the only thing “hi-tech” at New England Baptist Hospital. Nationally recognized as a leader in orthopedic care for years, New England Baptist now has a cutting edge communications network to go along with industry-leading medical care. With the help of Boston-based NEF, Inc., a telecommunications consulting company specializing in custom networks, New England Baptist is moving forward with its care and operations faster than ever.

New England Baptist, like many advanced health care organizations, is facing challenges on a variety of fronts. Patients have higher expectations for care and procedural efficiency; physicians need better, faster systems to maximize their time and specialties; finally, disaster recovery initiatives and HIPAA compliance require off-site back-up of voluminous and highly sensitive information.

How could New England Baptist address these three distinct issues quickly and cost effectively? The solution was dark fiber. By tapping into Boston’s wealth of unused optical fiber, known as dark fiber, the hospital now has a fail-proof connection to sensitive information and exponentially higher bandwidth for health care and records applications than ever before.

“Dark fiber not only gives New England Baptist Hospital a logistical solution to their current communications needs, but it gives them control over their network and the scalability to grow,” says Steve McCarthy of NEF. “Most importantly, the cost savings of implementing a network using dark fiber is substantial.”