Customer Success Story
Northeast Georgia Health System improves community health with AI-driven Juniper network
One million people in the mountains of Georgia rely on Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) for world-class care. A not-for-profit community hospital, NGHS is an ambitious innovator in improving clinical and business outcomes. In 2020, NGHS was recognized with a Level 9 certification on Healthcare’s Most Wired. It’s the health system’s seventh time on the prestigious list.
NGHS has relied on Juniper for enterprise core, campus, and data center networking for more than a decade, and most recently it shifted to Juniper wireless network, powered by Mist AI, for its hospitals.
Overview
| Company | Northeast Georgia Health System |
| Industry | Healthcare |
| Products used | Wi-Fi Assurance, Wireless Access Points, Wired Assurance, EX Series, QFX10002, MX480, MX240 |
| Region | Americas |
30X
Faster to provision backup connectivity to administrative buildings
50%
Time savings in Wi-Fi installation
1
Of the most wired hospitals in the U.S.
NGHS had solid, reliable Wi-Fi. But when it was time to upgrade its wireless LAN controllers to the latest software, NGHS wanted better. Chris Paravate, CIO at NGHS, took the opportunity to explore cloud-managed networks.
Paravate recognized the strategic advantage of using AI and analytics to deliver an optimized experience over a unified wired and wireless network. NGHS began to explore Juniper wireless services, driven by Mist AI.
“Mist AI was very appealing from a technical point of view,” says Paravate. “NGHS is bullish on how Juniper is leveraging the AI and analytics capabilities of Mist into its structured networking solutions.”
AI-driven network operations presents a compelling reason to change
NGHS is rolling out Juniper Wireless Services, driven by Mist AI, across its hospitals, clinics, and medical office buildings. Juniper Wireless Access Points work in conjunction with Juniper cloud services, driven by Mist AI, to optimize the network user experience and streamline IT operations. The network supports more than 50,000 devices and is designed to scale to many more.
AI-driven operations assure the user experience and simplify network operations. Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance automates wireless operations and simplifies the delivery of predictable, reliable Wi-Fi, with unique visibility into service levels.
Marvis Virtual Network Assistant empowers the IT team with proactive remediation through self-driving actions. Juniper Mist Wired Assurance delivers better experiences for connected devices through AI-driven operations and EX Series Switches deployed at the hospital.
After multiple fiber cuts between the main hospital and an administrative office, NGHS turned to the Juniper AP61 High-Performance Access Point for a mesh backhaul as backup connectivity. The mesh Wi-Fi was up and running in three days—dramatically faster than a new circuit installation.
Continued innovation improves community health
Staff can access clinical and administrative applications over their laptops and tablets from anywhere. Infusion pumps, EKG carts, and telemedicine kiosks are always connected. Physician’s BYOD experience has been vastly improved, and Wi-Fi calling is flawless even in the farthest corners of the hospital.
The hospital’s transition to an AI-driven network was transparent to hospital staff and swift for the IT team. “Juniper Mist was 50% less work to install than other wireless LAN solutions,” says Kristien Kramer, manager of network services at NGHS.
An AI-driven network has measurable operational benefits. “Troubleshooting is simpler,” says Kramer. “Marvis and Mist AI has helped us quite a bit to track down issues with problematic laptops.”
NGHS leadership is committed to using technology to improve patient outcomes as well as the clinician work experience. NGHS is readying the debut of an innovative way to find physicians for consults anywhere in the hospital.
“Our new mobility strategy combines traditional telecom and life-safety functions, and it all rides over our Juniper Mist network,” says Paravate. “It’s an exciting innovation that takes the hassle out of work for our clinicians.”
NGHS can count on Juniper as an innovation partner. “In my career, few vendors are as dedicated as Juniper Mist,” says Paravate. “The Mist engineering and product leadership are highly customer-focused.”
Northeast Georgia Health System is a not-for-profit community health system dedicated to improving the health and quality of life. In order to provide the best possible service to patients, NGHS relies on the high-performance capability, low latency and extreme reliability that Juniper’s solution provides. Its Juniper wireless network, powered by Mist AI, allows hospital staff to connect throughout the campus enabling them to focus on secure and reliable patient care.
Caring for over 1 million people, Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) is dedicated to improving the health of their community. Hospital staff and clinicians rely on Juniper’s next generation mobility solution driven by Mist AI. Follow Dr. Desai as she navigates throughout her day with a network that is secure and reliable.
The Products
Juniper is leading the convergence of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® LE, and IoT with our access points (APs). Juniper APs work seamlessly with the Juniper Mist Cloud architecture and Mist AI, enabling near real-time metadata collection and analysis from all wireless clients.
Marvis VNA
The Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) cloud service is the first and only cloud service that offers a natural language conversational interface for enterprise networks, enabling simple and seamless interactions to optimize user and operator experiences.
Wi-Fi Assurance
Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations. It ensures wireless networks are predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into service levels.
Wired Assurance
Juniper Mist Wired Assurance brings Mist AI to access-layer switching. It sets a new network management standard with AI-Native operations and automation, improving the experiences of devices connected through Juniper EX Series Switches.
Juniper cloud-ready EX Series switches are designed for the converged enterprise branch, campus, and data center. They address growing enterprise demands for high availability, unified communications, and virtualization.
QFX10002
QFX10002 fixed-configuration switches are very dense, highly scalable platforms designed for today’s most demanding data center, campus, and routing environments. They’re loaded with power and functionality, all housed in a compact, 2 U form factor.
QFX5100
The QFX5100 line of top-of-rack 10/40GbE switches for the data center offers low latency, deployment versatility, and rich automation features. These switches provide universal building blocks for industry-standard architectures such as spine-and-leaf fabrics.
MX480
The SDN-enabled MX480 Universal Routing Platform offers unprecedented scale for service provider and cloud applications, enabling the delivery of advanced business and residential multi-service edge services. The MX480 Universal Routing Platform delivers 7.5 Tbps of system capacity that supports inline MACsec without performance penalties for 10/40/100 GbE interfaces. It is also a carrier-grade platform with extensive automation capabilities.
MX240
The SDN-enabled MX240 Universal Routing Platform delivers unprecedented scale for advanced business and residential multi-service edge applications and services requiring power and space efficiency. The MX240 Universal Routing Platform has 3 Tbps of capacity in a 5 RU, 3 slot chassis, and delivers inline MACsec without performance penalties on 10 GbE, 40 GbE and 100 GbE interfaces.
Published August 2021