Healthcare ICT Trends & Innovation: 

Passive Optical LAN (GPON) for the New Era
Michael Wilson, RCDD
Solutions Engineering Manager, Tellabs Access
Darren Vican, RCDD, OSP
Vice President, RTKL

3/17/2015
Hospitals of Yesterday

Patient
Clinical 
Physician
Systems

Disparate Infrastructure & DAS & 

LMR
Networks for Each
Medical  Community
Technology

Smart  Operations
Building

3/17/2015
Digital Hospital Redefined
Patient
Truly Converged Physician Clinical 
IT Systems Systems

DIGITAL  DAS & 
HOSPITAL LMR
Medical 
Technology

Operations
Smart 
Building Community

3
Current Trends in Healthcare ICT
• Patient & Physician Centric Systems: Interactive Entertainment
& Education Systems, Wireless, & Video Conferencing, Real
Time Collab.
• Intelligent Facilities: Integrated Location Services
(RTLS), Integrated Security, Integrated BMS, Staff
Location Tracking

• Green IT Systems: Reductions in HVAC, Power and Backup systems

while increasing system reliability and capacity

• Potenial Financial Losses: Wait, what?

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 Current Risks in Healthcare ICT
• Network Downtime
• Outages = Lost Health Records (EHR) & images
• $385 = Per Lost EHR*
• 59% = % of Fortune 500 companies with AT LEAST 1.6 HOURS of downtime per week**
• $56 = D&B avg. employee per hour rate
• $140,000 = per hour cost of downtime for a 2,500 employee hospital + EHR losses
• Human Error (in IT, not the OR)
• 80% of mission critical outages will be caused by people & process**
• 50% of the 80% will be caused by change management & mis-configuration**
• Data Breaches
• 42% of breaches are caused by malicious or criminal attacks***
• 30% of breaches are caused by human error and mis-configurations***

*Healthcare News, February 2014 - http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthcares-slack-security-costs-16b

**http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/assessing-the-financial-impact-of-downtime/
***http://www.evolven.com/blog/downtime-outages-and-failures-understanding-their-true-costs.html
**** 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis, Ponemon Institute, May 2014
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/sel03027usen/SEL03027USEN.PDF
3/17/2015 5
 Current Reliability in Healthcare ICT
“EXPECTED” 2,500 User 
Network Downtime Cost per 
Reliability  99.938% = 325 downtime Minutes/Year   ~ 5.5 hours
Year

Reliability  99.9961% = 52 downtime Minutes/Year   ~ 1 hours

Reliability  99.999% = 5.26 downtime Minutes/Year   ~ .1 hours

Not practical or 
cost effective
This architecture requires the use of two network interface cards in each end-user workstation
* Source: Cisco Enterprise Campus 3.0 Architecture: Overview and Framework http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Campus/campover.html#wp709323
Ugly Reality in Healthcare ICT
Sample 2,500 User/Patient Hospital ALREADY experiences losses due to 
‘acceptable’ networks and infrastructure with poor reliability

99.9961% Legacy Network Downtime/Year

2,500 Users @ $56/Hour for 52.56 Mins:
Current ICT Answers in Healthcare
• More Technology Rooms
• More (and larger) Switches
• Larger Technology Rooms
• Larger Pathways
• More Power and More Cooling
• More Communications Cabling
• More Wireless Networks
• More Antennas
• More IT Staff to React to Downtime
 Healthcare Infrastructure of Yesterday
12 – 24 Cat6 Cables 12 – 24 Cat6 Cables 12 – 24 Cat6
per Critical Care per Operating Cables per
Room Room Specialty Suite

Layer after Layer of

Core, Distribution &
Access Switches and
their Backups

12 – 24 Cat6 Cables
per Patient Room
Re-Thinking Traditional Infrastructure
Passive Optical LAN (POL) GPON Technology
• Globally standardized transport solution for POL technology
• Enhanced data security (AES encryption)
• Highly flexible & scalable (from 100 to 100,000 users)
• Higher bandwidth capabilities than copper solution
• Less complexity by removing layers of distribution and access switching

• Converges voice, data, and video on to a single fiber
• Improved reliability (6‐9s or sub‐30s of yearly downtime & <3s failover)
• Downtime losses dramatically mitigated
• Reduced installation time and costs (~35% ‐ ~50%)
• Reduced overall lifecycle operating costs (~45% ‐ ~80%)
• Increased network performance for demanding applications
• Eliminates HVAC and UPS requirements and allows for smaller closets
• Replace workgroup switches with passive SMF splitters and panels
Healthcare Infrastructure of Yesterday (again)
12 – 24 Cat6 Cables 12 – 24 Cat6 Cables 12 – 24 Cat6
per Critical Care per Operating Cables per
Room Room Specialty Suite

Layer after Layer of

Core, Distribution &
Access Switches and
their Backups

12 – 24 Cat6 Cables
per Patient Room

1
1
Healthcare Infrastructure of Today
2 - 4 Strands of 2 - 4 Strands of
2 - 4 Strands of Fiber per Operating Fiber per
Fiber per Critical Room Specialty Suite
Care Room

Passive Splitters =
Simplicity, no HVAC,
& Smaller Closets

1 – 2 Strands of Fiber per

Patient Room

1
2
Why Passive Optical LAN for Healthcare
“EXPECTED” Network 
Reliability  99.9961% = 52.56 downtime Minutes/Year   ~ 1 hours Downtime Cost per Year

Reliability  99.9999% = 31.5 downtime Seconds/Year   ~ .0084 hours

Passive Optical LAN Saves the Hospital $121k/year in downtime losses alone; 
doesn’t include additional CapEx and OpEx equipment, power and cooling savings
Passive Optical LAN Schematic
OLAN OLTs 1270nm: 10GPON Upstream (10Gbps TDM)
Each OLT can (Primary & Redundant) 1310nm: GPON Upstream (1.24Gbps TDM)
Core
support over 8,000 1490nm: GPON Downstream (2.48Gbps TDMA)
Network
Gbe PoE+ Interfaces 1550nm: RF Video Downstream
from a single 1577nm: 10GPON Downstream (10Gbps TDMA)
managed IP Passive
Splitter Optical Network
Terminals

2x32
Each Gbe
Interface can
provides:
• 8 VLAN queues
• 256 MACs
• L2 – L4 ACLs
• PoE/PoE+
• 802.1x/NAC

QAM or
Broadcast
Video RF Video Fiber Amplifier Concurrent
1Gbps &
10Gbps
Operations
1
4
True Healthcare ICT Convergence Nurse Call

Patient Monitor

VoIP & Analog

Analog Voice Phone

Medical
Imaging
WiFi
Access Point
VoIP
Building
Automation
Systems

2:32 Surveillance
Camera
IP / Ethernet Video
Data Conferencing
& Telemedicine

RF and IP
Patient
IP Video
Entertainment
& Education
RTLS Systems

RF Video
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Legacy Copper Networks of Yesterday…

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…Become Simple Fiber Networks of Today

• Passive Splitter Device

• Ceiling, Floor or Closet
• Zero power required
• Zero HVAC required
Eliminate HEPA Tenting
• Single Mode Fiber (SMF) exceeds 103Tbps, cabling
infrastructure never needs to be replaced

• Zoned architectures greatly reduce any cabling

additions/changes and minimizes distances

• Plug-and-play pre-terminated fiber assemblies reduce

any installation times and tenting

• 1 SMF replaces 4 Category rated cables

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OLAN Healthcare Redundancy
Floor 3: Zone enclosures w/ 2:32 splitters and ONT 
powering panels.  Fed with redundant SMF links 
• Layer‐1 Redundancy in various and redundant N+1 Bulk DC power sources
options & configurations
• Sub‐second optical failover of all
ONTs Floor 2: Closet based splitters, redundant SMF trunk 
• Provides N+1 Power Capabilities to between IDF stacks for 2:32 splitter dual homing & 
the ONTs ONT N+1 powering
• OLTs can be provisioned to share
primary and failover loads for
maximum upstream connectivity
(80G max)
Floor 1: Closet based splitters, redundant SMF trunk 
• Provides <5‐second total system
between IDF stacks for 2:32 splitter dual homing
failover, or greater than 6‐9s of
availability

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OLAN Standards Compliance
Improved Security and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and 
Accountability Act, 1996) Compliance
– Optical LAN system wide security includes:
 Advanced Encryption Standard (e.g. AES)
 Service Segmentation (e.g. service level VLANs with hard QoS and 
security)
 Authentication & Authorization (e.g. IEEE  802.1x, NAC, PAC, DHCP option 82, RADIUS)
 Access Control Lists (e.g. at Layer‐2 Ethernet, Layer‐3 IP and Layer‐4 TCP/UDP)
 Rate Limiting (e.g. based on wide range of parameters)
 Exhaustive list of IP/Ethernet protocols matching legacy active Ethernet vendor functions

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 OLAN Standards Compliance
TIA 1179 Compliance
– TIA‐1179 calls for “maximum reliability will be priority” & “highest 
performing cable media”
– Network Availability
 Forget about cost of network down time, this is highest priority for healthcare 
critical care
 Need to force cost analysis on equal 99.9999 versus 99.999 annual availability
– Optical Distribution Network (ODN) redundancy
 With Type‐B PON redundancy and fiber route diversity
 Push redundancy to Telecom Enclosures (TE) and beyond
– Main data center equipment  (OLT) redundancy
 With Type‐B PON redundancy with OLTs located in different physical locations
– The Human Factor
 3.6% annual revenue loss, 50‐80% outages human error

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Relevant Healthcare Deployments
 Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital, CA
• Full Services Hospital: ER/ICU/Inpatient/Outpatient
• Deployment 2013
• VoIP & Data over POL
• 24‐port 1RU ONT deployment with legacy copper
• 8,100 Data Ports
 Western State Hospital, Staunton, VA
 ArchCare Terrence Cardinal Cooke, New York, NY
• Extended Care Hospital: Inpatient/Outpatient
• Deployment 2011
• All healthcare services over POL
• 4‐port ONT deployment
• 2,300 Data Ports
Moose Jaw
 Moose Jaw Union Hospital, SK, Canada
• Full Services Hospital: ER/ICU/Inpatient/Outpatient
• Deployment 2014‐15
• All healthcare services over POL
• Mixture of ONTs, all remotely powered with full redundancy
• 2,700 Data Ports
 Guthrie Hospital, Corning, NY
• Full Services Hospital: ER/ICU/Inpatient/Outpatient
• Deployment 2014
• Mental Health Services Hospital
• All healthcare services over POL
• Deployment 2013
• Mix 24‐port 1RU ONT deployment & 4‐port ONT deployment
• VoIP, Data, WiFi (Aruba) backhaul over GPON
• 3,000 Data Ports
• 24‐port 1RU ONT deployment
• 1900 Data Ports
 Healthcare ICT Trends & Innovation: 
Passive Optical LAN (GPON) for the New Era
Michael Wilson, RCDD
Solutions Engineering Manager, Tellabs Access
Darren Vican, RCDD, OSP
Vice President, RTKL

3/17/2015