‘FREE, fast and unlimited’ wifi has been rolled out at all of Andalucia’s hospitals in an 18.5 million project.
These millions have gone towards the installment of 18,000 wifi access points in the region’s hospitals, a move announced by the Junta’s president, Juanma Moreno, on Monday.
“Being connected is very important and, above all, being connected helps one make the most of every hour in hospital; reducing isolation that is often produced in hospitals and sharing concerns with those closest to you,” Moreno said.
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All health centres within the Andalucian Health Service (SAS) have benefitted from the project which saw the Junta collaborate with networks Vodafone and Innovasure.
The trio’s work is a ‘revolution’ for patients and healthcare professionals as it has transformed hospitals into ‘smart centres’ where there is an increasing amount of technology that operates on wifi, such as information screens, medical equipment and even ultrasound scanners.
“This means advancing to a much more digital health system that is more efficient and innovative,” Moreno stated.
Moreno has also explained that the ‘milestone’ network is already operating ‘in 430 health centres, schools, libraries, museums, old age homes and courts’ with a total of 122,000 connection points across Andalucia and 376,000 registered users.
According to Moreno, ‘Andalucia is a reference in Europe for connectivity’.
The network uses encryption ‘with continuous virus scans and regular checks to prevent security breaches’.
The Vodafone batch of installments can manage up to 3.2 terabytes per second of form data meaning that, for example, 640 films in 4k quality could be downloaded in the same second.
In a note on their contribution to the project Vodafone Spain has informed that it provided wifi to eight major hospitals through installing 442 switches.
One of these centres was the Universitario Virgen del Rocio hospital which proved particularly challenging for installation teams as it is one of Spain’s biggest hospitals and is composed of 20 buildings. Across these almost 1700 wifi access points were fitted.
The CEO of Vodafone Spain, Jose Miguel Garcia, has pointed out that health centres are particularly difficult to work in as ‘action must not be disrupted for even a second’.
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“We wanted hospitalised patients, family members accompanying a loved one, and healthcare professionals can all access free, secure, high-quality wifi,” said Garcia on the motivations behind the work of networks and the Junta.
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