Healthcare Leader Mayo Clinic Enables Innovative Mobility Solutions to Enhance Patient Care

Cisco Achieves Major Milestone in Enterprise Wireless Market with Shipment of Five Millionth Access Point to Mayo Clinic

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 2008 - Cisco announced today that Mayo Clinic, the largest integrated, not-for-profit group medical practice in the world, has deployed a Cisco® Unified Wireless Network to improve its patient care. The network encompasses more than 3,000 Cisco access points, Cisco 4400 Series controllers and the Cisco Wireless Services Module for the Catalyst 6500; delivering a broad set of healthcare mobility applications to its population of approximately 40,000 physicians, nurses and staff within its three U.S.-based campuses. In addition, Mayo will begin evaluating Cisco’s 802.11n Aironet® 1250 Series Access Points to enable a broader set of new mobility applications across its facilities. Cisco also announced that Mayo Clinic received Cisco’s five millionth Aironet access point, which began shipping in 2000. This marks yet another major milestone for Cisco in the evolution of the enterprise wireless market.

In addition to wireless data access for its 5,000 mobile users, Mayo has equipped approximately 1,000 users with wireless voice over IP (VoIP) phones, enabling better mobile collaboration between doctors, nurses and hospital staff, helping ensure that tasks like physician information entry can be accomplished in real time at a patient’s bedside. Mayo has also connected a variety of medical devices and equipment to the wireless LAN (WLAN) including 2,000 infusion pumps, 300 patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pumps and 100 pulse oximeters that are used to monitor patient heart rates and breathing. Connecting these devices to the wireless network allows doctors and nurses to access vital patient information from wherever they are in the hospital, improving their efficiency and resulting in better patient care.
Cisco Wireless Network Delivers Productivity Benefits, Better Patient Care to Mayo

Mayo’s reputation as a healthcare innovator required its information technology department to deploy a wireless networking infrastructure that supports the organization’s overall goals of delivering the highest levels of patient care, medical research and academic education. With its Cisco Unified Wireless Network, Mayo has enabled collaborative and productivity-enhancing applications for its physicians, nurses and staff.

“Mayo is constantly striving to improve upon its reputation as a pioneer in medical care, research and education,” said Randy Regimbal, Mayo Clinic’s director of network services. “Our Cisco Unified Wireless Network has become an essential foundation for meeting these strategic objectives and has empowered our physicians, nurses and administrative staff to dramatically improve the quality of patient care.”

“As the enterprise wireless network has evolved from a convenient access option into a strategic corporate asset, Cisco has introduced innovations in design, performance, security and reliability that have helped customers use the wireless network for their business-critical applications and data,” said Ben Gibson, Cisco’s senior director of mobility solutions. “We are committed to helping our customers meet and exceed their business objectives by transforming their wireless infrastructures into true mobility networks. In the case of Mayo Clinic, we’re enabling a broader set of mobility solutions that can help improve the overall patient experience.”

Mayo will begin testing the Cisco 802.11n Aironet 1250 Series Access Points, as the clinic is interested in the enhanced throughput, reliability and predictability afforded by 802.11n technology, as well as its ability to enable new mobility applications that will continue to improve the quality of care.

Cisco was first to market with an integrated 802.11n draft 2.0 solution, allowing organizations like Mayo to take full advantage of mobility applications, and it was the first vendor to ship Wi-Fi Alliance-certified 802.11n draft 2.0 products globally. Cisco continues to accelerate the adoption of 802.11n with customer deployments across numerous vertical markets including healthcare, education and hospitality. With more than 50,000 802.11n access points shipped since October 2007, and landmark deployments including Concordia University, University of California at Berkeley, Duke University and Oriental Bangkok, Cisco leads the market with real-world production deployments that give enterprises the performance and reliability they need to scale their networks now, while protecting their investments for the future.
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