Case study – WiFi Humanitas
WiFi in Humanitas: improving the Patient Experience
Humanitas is a highly specialised teaching and research hospital. It includes dedicated centres for the treatment of cancers, cardiovascular diseases, neurological and orthopaedic disorders, as well as an Ophthalmology Centre and a Fertility Centre. The hospital is also equipped with emergency and radiotherapy areas. It has several locations in three Italian regions and serves almost 1 million patients a year.
Challenge
Humanitas has extensive WiFi coverage in its facilities, built to support internal operations and doctors, nurses and staff activities. With the increasing attention to the digital needs of patients, the hospital decided to extend this WiFi infrastructure. The dual intent was to make patients’ journeys easier and to have a digital point of contact with them.
The digital infrastructure had to be shared between sensitive patient information for internal use and guest and public patient traffic. Therefore, a powerful and flexible user and traffic management platform was needed that could provide efficient onboarding but also maintain the necessary traffic segregation in public health facilities.
In addition, the platform should provide tools and functionality to support the evolution of Patient Journey management. This includes the ability to provide multiple levels of onboarding, GDPR consent management, informative mechanisms and analytical tools.
Solution
In order to deliver such a delicate and crucial service in an efficient manner, and to keep a continuous control over data gathered from the patients, Humanitas has chosen to internalize the Authentication platform on its datacenter, thus having full control over it.
The InPiazza Platform has therefore been installed and delivered on the private Humanitas datacenter, with direct network connection with the WiFi infrastructure and no contact with the outside.
Different user tiers have been established, in order to treat every user of the WiFi network in the Humanitas campus with dedicated policies:
WiFi Guests: occasional users patients or their companions, who take advantage of WiFi connectivity while waiting for a medical visit. Such users are self-authenticated, with a combination of Social Login and SMS authentication.
WiFi Patients: hospitalised patients who need more stable and persistent connectivity. These users are authenticated through an access code provided at the beginning of their stay.
WiFi Conference: users who participate in conferences, conventions and symposia in the Campus Conference Centre. Participants are authenticated through a conference code, specific to each conference and provided to participants with the material. Users are requested to provide some information when they log in (such as their job, affiliation, etc).
Every user tier is treated with a specific policy, in terms of available Internet access duration, bandwidth, traffic quantity, number of contemporary devices and so on, so that every user receives a service
which is specifically tailored to his needs.
Special attention is paid to the privacy of the users, given the delicate environment in which the WiFi network is operated; the whole process is GDPR compliant and all the consents are gathered and treated in the most respectful way.
Results
The service has been employed by hundreds of thousands of users, with an average of 1000 contemporary users during working hours and with high return rates.
InPiazza is happy to support health structures to drive their Patient Journey!
“The WiFi service provided by Humanitas’ infrastructure and the inPiazza Platform has been widely appreciated by the end users, who enjoy a better patient experience in the Humanitas campus”
Flavio Tavarnelli
Network and Cybersecurity Manager at Humanitas S.p.A.
