Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital turns to Lightpath for voice, data, and Internet services
11 August 2003 Jericho, NY Lightwave -- Lightpath, the business telecommunications services division of Cablevision Systems Corp., today announced that it has been selected as Lenox Hill Hospital's primary provider of voice, data, and Internet services. Lenox Hill Hospital is the first hospital in Manhattan to which Lightpath is providing advanced telecommunications services. Lightpath already serves 36 major hospitals throughout Westchester County and Northern New Jersey, as well as 95% of the hospitals on Long Island.
To support this multi-year contract, Lightpath built a private optical network to carry Lenox Hill Hospital's voice, data, and Internet traffic--at a significant cost savings for the institution, say Lightpath representatives. The SONET access ring interconnects Lenox Hill Hospital's four facilities in Manhattan via Lightpath's optical core local exchange transport network: the main Lenox Hill Hospital facility at 100 East 77th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side; the Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital, a subsidiary of Lenox Hill Hospital; and the two Lenox Hill Community Medical Group outpatient centers. In addition, the private network will help ensure that the effects of a disaster will be minimized and that the hospital will be able to maintain mission-critical functions.
In a competitive bid process, Lightpath was selected over the incumbent carrier to build the private optical network due to its robust network design and ability to meet Lenox Hill Hospital's very aggressive deployment window of 30-60 days. The network that
Lightpath proposed included redundancy throughout the entire network with each location having dual fiber entrances and redundant network components (e.g., multiplexers, hubs, and switches). In addition, the redundant access network rings connect to physically diverse paths on Lightpath's metropolitan area network, each of which has separate Central Office (CO) locations and redundant 5ESS voice switches, which are both located outside of Manhattan, ensuring that the network can remain in operation even in the event of a major disruption.
The Lightpath network supports the hospital's voice communications, a number of data applications, including patient order entry and patient billing, as well as Internet-based applications, such as collaborative medical research with other facilities around the world.
Having this carrier-class network in place will also enable Lenox Hill Hospital to deploy a number of bandwidth intensive applications to improve the level of patient care being delivered by its physicians and staff. Among these are the Hospital's new clinical information system, a centralized system that can be accessed by doctors located in any of the Hospital's facilities, and a digital radiology imaging system, so doctors can review X-ray films and MRI on computer monitors at a patient's bedside.
Lightpath owns and operates its metropolitan area network from end-to-end.