By Christine Landry, Vice President, Global Head Consult, Healthcare and Atif Sheikh, Customer Technical Solutioner
Healthcare systems are under unprecedented pressure. Rising costs, workforce shortages and a surge in cyber threats are converging as care becomes more digital, more distributed, and increasingly AI-driven.
Yet many providers are attempting to manage risks and scale the next generation of care on infrastructure designed for a different era.
Traditional wireless environments weren’t built for today’s most complex care requirements — including the ability to stay mobile with multiple devices and build data pipelines that support “hospital-at-home” models. They may also hold providers back from adopting emerging innovations like digital twins and AI-native workflows that can not only improve IT performance and strengthen cyber resilience but boost clinician productivity, reduce documentation burden, and enable entirely new care models.
Increasingly, healthcare leaders are adopting private wireless and private 5G networks that give their organizations greater control over performance, coverage, security and device connectivity. As providers scale AI systems, connected medical devices, virtual care and distributed clinical operations, intelligent connectivity is becoming as critical to care delivery as the electronic health records (EHR) that many of us now rely on.
Why traditional connectivity falls short
As healthcare organizations advance their digital transformations, many focus on important areas like data platforms, applications and AI pilots while underinvesting in the foundational infrastructure required to scale them.
Historically, the backbone of IT for healthcare systems has been the Wide Area Network (WAN), a large network infrastructure that unifies the technology scattered across geographically dispersed hospitals, clinics and other medical sites. But with static routing, limited bandwidth and a hub-and-spoke architecture that can quickly create bottlenecks, these networks were designed for yesterday’s healthcare needs.
Given the quickening pace of technological change and the enhanced connectivity needed to scale AI, organizations are rethinking rigid architectures that fundamentally limit agility, adaptability and control. Moreover, they’re learning that the high cost of supporting legacy architectures drains resources from other technology priorities.
The dispersed nature of legacy architectures — spanning access groups, branch sites and disparate systems — also creates unique security and operational challenges for providers. Protected Health Information (PHI) is highly valuable to malicious actors. At a critical moment when AI-driven attacks are fundamentally changing cybersecurity, organizations need holistic visibility across the full network to mitigate threats — something outdated infrastructure and IT that’s at or near end-of-service cannot provide.
Networks built for the next era of care
Healthcare leaders are updating transport mechanisms and embracing software-defined infrastructure that allows them to centralize network control in one unified dashboard, leverage dynamic routing, and more consistently enforce security, resiliency and compliance measures. Another significant advantage of modernized architectures lies in automated provisioning, which allows organizations to skip the long waits associated with manual configuration and circuit installations.
As healthcare systems modernize the WAN, they must also reexamine their local area networks (LAN), the network infrastructure that, for example, connects devices within one individual hospital. For many providers, modern LAN strategies must account for private wireless and private 5G, which enhance network environments where predictable performance, secure connectivity and real-time data exchange are essential.
In considering where to focus investments and what to prioritize, key areas for improvement include:
As healthcare systems run more IoT (Internet of Things) and medical devices at the edge, they’ll need network infrastructure capable of supporting real-time data processing at the point of care. Upgrading wireless access points and switching capabilities will enable edge intelligence use cases such as real-time patient monitoring, AI-assisted clinical decision support and improved compliance.
With more connected devices at the edge, healthcare organizations must automate security and adopt zero-trust measures to safeguard critical systems and data. Networks should be capable of recognizing devices and onboarding them automatically, leveraging a detailed inventory database for tracking. Segmentation by device category is crucial and access to devices should be role-based to help ensure that only authorized staff interacts with specific devices. Additionally, private wireless architecture can offer more granular control over connectivity while mitigating operational complexity.
One of the most pressing considerations for healthcare facilities is the capacity of their wireless networks amid the surging volume of devices. The Wi-Fi 6 standard provides two to three times the bandwidth of previous generations and is specifically designed for high-density environments, making it ideal for hospitals where connectivity demands are high.
Network infrastructure directly influences how quickly clinicians can access information, how effectively AI models can operate in real time, how securely patient data can be stored and how reliably care can be delivered across both physical and virtual settings. Because of this link, the next phase of healthcare modernization depends on networks that connect people, devices, data and AI in real time.
Healthcare systems do not have the luxury of treating network modernization as a back-office initiative. Instead of a simple routine upgrade, private networks that are integrated with cloud, edge and EHR platforms can provide the agile foundation required to support digital-first expectations for distributed care, automated clinical workflows, and innovation at scale. The organizations that invest in this next-generation connectivity will redefine the future of healthcare.
