“GE Healthcare has been working with InHand Networks for many years. Their commitment and constant endeavor to improve has made them highly competitive.”
- Owen Lu,Digital Program Manager,GE Healthcare
Background
CT scans have been widely applied in medical diagnostics. Featuring sophisticated structures and high costs for management, the large professional equipment poses many challenges on the maintenance and service capabilities of their manufacturers.
When the novel coronavirus swept across the globe, GE Healthcare’s CT scanners, both traditional machines operated in hospitals and the newly-developed mobile equipment installed in trucks, were employed as a supplement to the nucleic acid test. As an increasing number of suspected patients were sent to the hospital, the scanners became overloaded, working 24/7 for disease diagnosis. It was important to ensure that the devices were running reliably and faultlessly.
Challenges
- Reliable, uninterrupted networking to ensure real-time communication with medical equipment
- Sophisticated data security mechanism and encrypted data transmission
- Connected to cloud for easier management and deployment
- Industrial design, stable operation for long time in harsh environments
Solution
To meet GE Healthcare’s needs, InHand Networks offered a solution using its InRouter900 industrial LTE M2M router, delivering fast and reliable connectivity with GE’s CT scanners.
The InRouter900 connected IPCs and CT scanners to the industrial IoT. Real-time data on temperature, humidity and other variables were constantly sent by the routers via secure IPSec VPN tunnels. On the other side, GE’s smart remote service offered 24*7 real-time monitoring of each scanner, kept track of their operating environments and automatically sent warnings in case of problems. Once a fault occurred, it could immediately locate the equipment, thus facilitating troubleshooting and reducing downtime. The system also offered remote assistance in CT/MR equipment application, sharing knowledge about equipment operation and maintenance.
Meanwhile, the routers were managed by InHand’s cloud platform Device Manager. With an easy-to-use visualization user interface, the Device Manager enabled the customer to remotely monitor and control the InRouter900, configure the devices in batches and upgrade them on a regular basis.
Features
- Fast and reliable 3G/4G networks, available with LTE CAT6/CAT4
- Dual SIM for carrier failover
- Multi-layer auto link detection & recovery
- Multi-layer security protection
- Wide temperature range: - 25°C~+70°C for harsh environments
- Metal enclosure, IP30 protection, EMC level 4
Benefits
Fast, reliable and uninterrupted connectivity
The InRouter900 provides continuous access to high speed cellular networks. With multi-layer auto link detection and recovery, the InRouter900 ensures that all the medical equipment is always online.
Efficient diagnosis and immediate troubleshooting, lower operational and maintenance costs, and less downtime
The InRouter900 makes communication smooth and reduces downtime. Once an issue occurs, the problem can be quickly identified and located from the maintenance center, so that immediate measures can be taken.
Better protection of data transmission
Medical data is transmitted via IPSec VPN tunnels, freeing customers from security concerns.
Connected to cloud for easier management and deployment
The InRouter900 is connected to InHand’s Device Manager cloud platform, which is easy for remote monitoring and batch management.
More Application Areas
Integrating 3G/4G cellular routing and VPN technologies, the InRouter900 is a high-end industrial router. Now available with LTE CAT6/CAT4, the InRouter900 can provide highly efficient and reliable LTE connectivity for various M2M/IoT applications including healthcare, industrial automation, remote monitoring, traffic management and more.
