VMware SD-WAN for healthcare

Updated 11/17/2022

Why are hospitals, clinics and health organizations choosing VMware SD-WAN for healthcare networks?

VMware SD-WAN is highly secure to protect sensitive patient data. It is SOC2 Type 2 and ICSA certified, and is the only SD-WAN solution with FedRAMP High Authorization.
IT managers can easily segment traffic from end to end to isolate various types—voice, data, HIPAA, PCI, IoT and more—and meet compliance requirements.
VMware SD-WAN has integrated AIOps to identify network or application issues and suggest remediation, greatly reducing operational effort.

Keep reading to learn more about one hospital’s story, then check out our VMware SD-WAN solution overview for healthcare.

It became a sadly familiar sight: Tents in parking lots and tables in available buildings, now filled with healthcare workers testing patients for COVID-19. When the pandemic began in early 2020, healthcare providers soon understood that they needed to provide testing sites outside of traditional healthcare spaces. They had to protect non-COVID patients and accommodate very large volumes of people who needed tests and care.

However, these remote sites required the same network connectivity and access to critical applications as hospital and clinic buildings. Reliable networks are not always available in the right place at the right time, so healthcare providers must rely on whatever connection they have on hand. And with the virus spreading rapidly, those networks had to be deployed quickly.

Three networked testing sites deployed in 24 hours

One large hospital system in the Midwestern United States found itself with an urgent need to establish pop-up testing clinics – within 24 hours. They turned to their managed services provider, a longtime VMware partner, for help. The existing long-term relationship between the hospital system and the partner turned out to be crucial. With its deep knowledge of the hospital system’s network, the partner was able to deliver a VMware SD-WAN™ solution on demand, despite global problems with inventory.

Three fully operational VMware SD-WAN networks were deployed in one day and twelve more not long after, with direct connections to the hospital system’s existing data centers and applications. Managed services from the partner allowed the hospital system to deploy more resources toward serving their patients’ health needs. What was the end result? The hospital system could test and treat tens of thousands of people for COVID-19 in non-traditional locations.

Connectivity where it’s needed

The pandemic is beginning to wane, but the changes it brought will live on. There’s a lesson to be learned from the short (but ongoing) history of how SD-WAN helped healthcare workers all over the world in their time of greatest need: VMware SD-WAN is an incredible flexible and easy-to-use technology.

Its cloud-based, transport-independent architecture lets you use whatever connectivity you have. Cellular? Satellite? Consumer broadband? VMware SD-WAN provides the flexibility to use the most optimal and available transport.
Dynamic Multipath Optimization™, or DMPO, provides real-time monitoring, link remediation, and packet steering over multiple WAN links connecting multiple sites together or different sites to VMware SD-WAN Gateways. Customers can set unique policies on a per-application basis, align them to specific SLAs associated with those applications, and transmit traffic on the most optimal paths based on real-time analysis.
Easy, zero-touch deployment, orchestrated from a single point, brings new locations online in minutes without onsite IT personnel.

Fast and simple setup for use in healthcare and beyond

These are just a few of the customer stories that show how VMware SD-WAN continues to be deployed quickly in all kinds of places across all types of organizations:

VMware delivered 500 urgently needed VMware SD-WAN Edge devices to MD Anderson Cancer Center at the beginning of the pandemic – without even having a purchase order in hand – so employees could work offsite, protecting cancer patients and employees alike.
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) and VMware partner GCSIT created COVID-19 testing sites in buildings with no wired connectivity, using a combination of VMware SD-WAN Edge 510-LTE and AT&T mobile hotspot devices.
Dental service organization InterDent is using VMware SD-WAN Edge devices to support mobile clinics in underserved areas. Using specially equipped vans, InterDent travels to schools and rural areas to provide free and low-cost dental services. And coming soon, they will hit the road in a tiny house with even more space so they can provide additional medical services such as diabetes testing.

To find out what VMware SD-WAN and VMware SASE can do for your healthcare business – or any business – contact your VMware sales representative today.