Gain a ‘Healthy’ Lead with Airtel Intelligent VPN

  • 6 min read
SD-WAN Solutions for Healthcare

Poor healthcare kills 1.6 million Indians every year. The number isn’t just a death toll. It is a harsh reflection of the challenges that Indian healthcare systems battle every day. From inadequate resources and infrastructure to unimaginable patient loads and high out-of-pocket expenditure, every challenge leads to the same unfortunate outcome—millions are denied the care that can grant them healthy lives.

New demands from patients and healthcare professionals have further forced healthcare organisations, both private and public, to stay on their toes. Today, healthcare providers need to constantly innovate to offer services to patient populations from multiple locations. This also brings with it the challenge of securing communication and enabling round-the-clock access to critical applications and clinical data, while staying compliant.

To shoulder such an immense weight, the custodians of global health need secure, reliable networks that are capable of supporting vast volumes of critical data. Investments in health technology and the growth of digital health services have only made this need more pressing. If there’s anything that can help you maintain a healthy lead in this race to deliver more value on-demand and excellent care to patients, it’s your network—a network that is consistently secure, flexible and reliable.

What’s enough  when there’s no time to wait?

In the throes of the pandemic, over 50 million Indians turned to teleconsultation services to gain access instant, high-quality, affordable healthcare. The pandemic might have receded but the digital health movement it sparked is here to stay. Revenue in the digital health market is expected to grow by 28.57% annually, resulting in a projected market volume of ₹1,973,002.27 million by 2026.

The increasing number of mergers, partnerships and acquisitions (MPA) that combine many disparate platforms relying on different connectivity models further complicates the matter. Patient records belonging to each company must remain secure, accurate and accessible by both organisations—the parent and the subsidiary. And this data sharing is completely dependent on their seamless network integration. The ability to deliver outcome-driven health care experiences relies not only on the performance and availability of critical digital clinical tools, virtual applications and desktops but also on how quickly and securely new MPA sites are integrated into the parent network.

In a traditional WAN (wide area network) environment, for MPA sites to be integrated into the parent company, their existing circuits and infrastructure . This can often take a year or more to execute and is a cost-intensive project. Not to mention how some of the solutions such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), video conferencing, VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), 3D graphics imaging and modelling, and more, used to deliver digital health services consume a lot of bandwidth. In a worst-case scenario, these inefficiencies can mean a complete breakdown of the healthcare infrastructure.

Typical WAN fixes for high-performance, such as adding more bandwidth to increase WAN capacity for accommodating electronic health records and large imaging files, or adding one or two broadband paths through the public Internet as a backup for MPLS links, are unfortunately inadequate. For the simple reason that if a WAN link degrades, requires changes, or has an outage, switching to backup connections can take seconds or even minutes. When the blink of an eye can mean the difference between life and death, even a one-second delay can be catastrophic. Critical healthcare applications and data cannot be unavailable, take a long time to load, or time out.

What can then be a better fix for an industry that has perhaps seen the greatest disruptive growth in the past few years? A network infrastructure that is secure, intelligent and offers high-performance connectivity to support its operations. And, that’s exactly what SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) offers. With its high uptime, availability, agility, and reliability, it supports healthcare providers like you to fulfil the solemn promise of serving humanity. SD-WAN brings to you the uninterrupted data-powered resilience you need to build the future of healthcare.

Airtel – An SD-WAN solution for the industry that never sleeps

Airtel Intelligent VPN is the game-changer SD-WAN solution that can redefine your networking infrastructure. Its industry-leading architecture enables easy deployment over your existing networking infrastructure at any site, on a variety of connection types, without the need for any on-site technical expertise. Airtel Intelligent VPN offers consistent, intelligent and high-performance connectivity which makes it an excellent solution for healthcare providers like you who demand an uncompromisingly high level of application performance and data security.

This next-generation SD-WAN solution allows any remote site, pharmacy, clinic, or hospital to seamlessly gain secure and easy access to clinical data and cloud applications in real-time. It performs intelligent load balancing, application prioritisation and transport neutrality to ensure your critical applications are always available and running smoothly. If a link degrades, requires changes, or has an outage, Airtel Intelligent VPN switches critical application traffic over in milliseconds so you can keep working without interruption. What’s more, it provides higher bandwidth and the flexibility you need to deploy more applications to a greater number of users and integrate MPA sites into the parent network in no time.

Airtel Intelligent VPN provides significant benefits not only for you but also for your customers. By enabling you to share large images, VoIP, video conferences, and more with your consumers in real-time, close contacts of the patient can actively participate in and stay updated on their care. All of that without you having to worry about inhibiting your network’s ability to meet critical demands. As the healthcare industry continues to evolve to a value-based care model, Airtel Intelligent VPN helps you to deploy and manage your network in a way that is agile, easy and cost-effective.

Powered by Airtel’s global experience as a trusted managed service provider, our holistic capabilities enable your business to unlock next-gen efficiencies. From redesigning network architecture to ensuring seamless solution deployment and effective project management, Airtel supports your organisation throughout its innovation journey. We combine this with our SLA-driven flexible engagement models, proactive monitoring and round-the-clock field support, allowing you to focus on what you do best—saving lives.