Hospital Ensures Network Health and Improves Performance Seven-Fold

• Successful deployment of Dell SonicWALL's SuperMassive ensures faster network.
• BYOD deployment resulted in productivity increasing to 70 percent.
• Cost-savings of up to 35 percent.

Dubai, 21 October 2013: King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital (KFAFH), located in Jeddah, KSA, has increased its overall network by up to seven times after it turned to Dell SonicWALL to support and protect two data centers and five-city wide satellite clinics that form part of a national network of healthcare facilities.

The hospital managed by the Medical Services Division of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), has 450 beds and provides a wide range of primary, secondary and tertiary medical services to members of the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces and their dependents. After increasing its infrastructure to 10GBbps, KFAFH was faced with several security challenges.

“The hospital did not have secure or reliable access to online, internal and web services,” said Abdullah Y. Alfie, Director of Communication and Information Technology. “In addition our system was unprotected from threats and stagnant. We found ourselves vulnerable and we were unable to work outside of the hospital securely. We wanted to enable our doctors and staff to have access to our internal resources wherever they are.”

Dell SonicWALL deployed its Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive™ E10200 Next-Generation Firewalls to provide multiple layers of security to protect the data centers. In addition, doctors and staff requested access to corporate network resources from their personal smartphones, tablets and laptops. The hospital required a secure way to roll out its BYOD initiative. To enable staff to work from outside the hospital, KFAFH implemented Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive™ E10200 Next-Generation Firewalls.

“Now our consultants and staff can save time by working anywhere. With BYOD, now the on call staff doesn't have to travel all the way to the hospital and can easily access the required services from anywhere. This has resulted in doctors saving several hours during the day,” said Alfie. “Doctors can assess and diagnose a condition just by accessing our portal, no matter where they are in the world.”

The Aventail supports 250 concurrent users. Doctors who are often on call and on a rotation schedule now have access to internal resources for efficient communication between all staff. Doctors on call can now process patients' records faster, analyze patients and communicate with other medical staff via the internal network. As a result productivity is at 70 percent. Embracing a BYOD strategy, KFAFH also implemented Dell™ SonicWALL™ Mobile Connect for iOS, allowing staff to use iOS tablets and smartphones to connect safely.

KFAFH remote clinics are also connected to the main location in Jeddah. While some of them are connected as part of the network, others are connected through SSL VPN, allowing the clinics to link to the Jeddah head offices.

“Our goal was to enable a connected workforce regardless of location,” said Alfi.

“KFAFH is a good example of effective use of Dell SonicWALL technologies. In a changing IT environment that requires employees, especially doctors, to work remotely, we are proud that Dell SonicWALL could provide KFAFH with the necessary technologies,” said Shahnawaz Sheikh, Dell SonicWALL's Regional Director, Middle East, Africa and Turkey.