Health Care Challenges Memo - Essay Example

Healthcare Challenges Memo Affiliation Healthcare Challenges Memo IT Department Head of Departments Health Care Network Being that our departments are interconnected through a network, it would be prudent to have data segregated between the Administrative and patient care departments. With the increased coverage of our network and thus translating to too much traffic, its performance has been deteriorating. To mitigate this we need to break the network into small pieces so that the data that is currently over the network is segregated.

Among the many ways that this can be done subnetting remains the best choice. According to Martina Ziefle (2010) Subnetting is where the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or Internet Protocol (IP) network is split into smaller and more manageable networks. The advantage that comes with subnetting is that most data will be managed effectively and also the speed of the network will improve in folds.Network Infrastructure and Configurations Used in Health Care Organizations. Most health care organizations have been able to implement networks into their communications systems as such information flow and exchange between departments.

To enable they have various network infrastructures and configurations (Martina Ziefle, 2010). First is the data center that hosts the hospitals administrative and patient care operations. The most common infrastructures used in healthcare are integrated services Digital Network (ISDN) technology and communication satellite technology. The former enables the merging of separate networks into a single high speed communication infrastructure through digital transmission as well as switching. The networks can either be broadband or narrowband.

The common configurations or protocols here are circuit switched work, packet switched network and cell switched networks. The latter consists of satellites, a system control center as well as getaways. The bandwidth of the satellite network infrastructure is wide and it is also secure (Martina Ziefle, 2010).Challenges of Data Communication Data that is being transmitted over the network and especially that which contains large files such as those needed for maintaining radiology films and other results that must be maintained and transferred are numerous.

First off, the data may be delayed over the network and may even lead to the jamming of the network (Misra, Misra, & Woungang, 2010). This reduces the speed of the network and at its worse may lead to the closure of the network. This therefore makes subnetting efficient since such a problem will be taken care of.Requirements (Equipment) To allow the segregation of data there are a range of equipments that must be in place this includes: multiservice router, multilayer switch, optical multiservice platforms, optical switches, servers, and Ethernet cables as well as wireless links such as adapters (Misra, Misra, & Woungang, 2010).

Security of the Network To ensure security over the network a number of steps must be achieved. First off, the users should be prompted to enter their personal data as well as identification codes. These will function as passwords and must be changed frequently. The other move is to restrict the system use to the needs of the healthcare rather than other uses. The access to data should also be minimized; this can be done through allowing access of data recommended to a person’s given jurisdiction (Xiao, Li, & Chen, 2011).

The access to the computers can further be minimized by physical measures such as fingerprint identifications, smartcards or other methods to determine credibility of access to the computers and data (Xiao, Li, & Chen, 2011). The data over the network can also be encrypted and the persons accessing required to key in decryption keys so as to be able to access the data. The access of healthcare network is only open to the hospital staff that serve in the departments that are authorized to access the data such as Administrative and Patient care departments.

However, since the internet services are also accessed via the network any person including guests will be allowed to access the internet only upon entering the network access codes. The people who will be managing and authenticating the access to the network and information are the database administrator and network administrator (Xiao, Li, & Chen, 2011). They will keep a log of all those who access the network as well as the information they want. As a security measure all those who are requesting to access the network will have to provide their access codes so as to keep off intruders.

The equipments that need to access the network must also obtain the authentication from the network administrator so that the data that is limited to a given department is not breached. This said and done the hospital after addressing all the challenges mentioned will be able to scale high in quality health care provision.ReferencesMartina Ziefle. (2010). Human-Centered Design of E-Health Technologies. IGI Global. Misra, S., Misra, S. C., & Woungang, I. (2010). Selected topics in communication networks and distributed systems.

Singapore: World Scientific. Xiao, Y., Li, F. H., & Chen, H. (2011). Handbook of security and networks. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific.