Reengineering healthcare infrastructure for a new era

The next generation of healthcare IT infrastructure must be agile, flexible, and scalable to support high-stakes, high-value activities. Those activities would include the adoption of AI tools and a much larger number of connected devices both inside and outside of the healthcare campus. 

Healthcare organizations’ (HCO) leaders are recognizing the urgent need to prepare their organizations for a massive surge of new AI-enabled capabilities. The most recent CHIME Digital Health Most Wired  (DHMW) reported 85% of executive respondents said infrastructure development was a top priority, up significantly from the previous year. Analytics, interoperability, and cybersecurity were also major concerns. 

For HCOs, the care delivery model must define the infrastructure strategy — not the other way around. To be successful, infrastructure strategies must be backed by business plans that clearly identify how they enable growth, reduce risk, improve care delivery, and advance the broader goals of the health system.

Making cyberdefense foundational in HCOs

As organizations adopt technologies that could potentially serve as entry points for bad actors, cybercriminals are constantly seeking new vulnerabilities to exploit.

If there is one shared imperative across all sizes, types, and specialties of HCOs, it’s protecting infrastructure from an endless and ever-increasing onslaught of cybersecurity threats. The primary consideration when developing an approach to infrastructure is the concept of being secure by design. 

Rather than treating security as a bonus feature to include in existing systems, this approach weaves protective measures into the fabric of healthcare infrastructure. This security-first mindset demands that every digital tool or system is secure and can adapt to new threats organically, to create a resilient infrastructure. 

Identity-based security practices approaches are revolutionizing the cyberdefense activities of HCOs as care delivery becomes more mobile, distributed, and flexible. 

 Identity-based infrastructure involves several essential practices, including: 

• Integrating robust identity governance frameworks 
• Implementing multi-layered security that combines identity verification with network segmentation and encryption 
• Adopting Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) security frameworks that verify every access request regardless of source 

Beyond bandwidth: software-defined networks for scalable, secure care

Cybercriminals aren’t the only ones putting profound new pressures on healthcare infrastructure. The rapid adoption of telehealth, remote patient monitoring and AI-powered administrative and clinical tools are also stretching legacy networks to their limits. 

To thrive in this data-driven ecosystem, HCOs need a robust and intelligent approach to connectivity. Software-defined networks (SDN) are poised to revolutionize how hospitals operate and deliver care. But SDN isn’t just about performance. It’s where zero trust, identity-based controls, and network segmentation can be combined in the most effective manner. Building on the fundamentals of traditional software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN), SDN offers the agility, scalability, and security required for HCOs to thrive. 

HCOs are facing a surge in connected devices, from patient wearables to AI-powered surgical robots. At the same time, organizations are increasingly integrating patient wearables into the Electronic Health Record of patients, according to the DHMW survey, especially among medium (66%) and large (70%) providers. The result is what CHIME calls a “swarm-ilization” of devices, where many sources of data coalesce dynamically to produce meaningful insights. 

While this concept holds enormous power for supporting more proactive and informed care, it can also create a perfect storm of bottlenecks, vulnerabilities, and management challenges for traditional networks, especially when coupled with the rise of data-intensive AI applications. 

SD-WAN offers a compelling solution to these challenges. In traditional networks, hardware often determinesfunctionality.  SD-Wan separates the control plane from the data plane, and enables a centralized, programmable approach to managing network resources. 

This can unlock benefits for HCOs, including optimized network performance, reduced operational costs, and streamlined network management through automation and centralized control. SDN leverages open application programming interfaces (APIs) to dynamically adjust network configurations in real-time, ensuring optimal performance for mission-critical applications.

For AI to fulfill its promise, HCOs need an AI-ready infrastructure that can integrate disparate data sources, triage needs appropriately and efficiently link every corner of the organization. 

To support AI-driven healthcare, infrastructure needs to evolve in three key areas: 

• Network Capacity: AI applications demand high-speed, low-latency connectivity to ensure real-time data processing. Legacy networks, originally designed for basic administrative functions, can struggle under this load. 
• Computing Resources: AI workloads require significant processing power, and high-performance computing and edge processing help meet these demands. Many health systems are choosing a hybrid approach to find the best and most economical fit. 
• Scalability: AI adoption is accelerating, and healthcare organizations must prepare for continuous growth. Infrastructure that supports rapid scaling can help to ensure future-proof operations. 

Together, these factors can support a network able to gather critical data resources, avoid redundancies, and support AI-enabled analytics tools. The goal isn’t just connectivity — it’s fluid, real-time insight that improves both operational efficiency and patient care. 

How Spectrum Business can help 

We understand and fully support that the enduring goal of healthcare professionals is to improve outcomes and clinical and patient experiences. We work with your team to achieve your goals with a customizable, scalable, network infrastructure. Find out why we’ve partnered with more than 119,000 HCOs to provide secure connectivity and communications solutions.