AI-Native Network is the right medicine for UZ Leuven

UZ Leuven’s main campus in Gasthuisberg, Belgium is vast, covering nearly a square mile and home to the academic hospital, research labs, and surgical training center. Like many hospitals, its wireless network had grown organically over time, and increasing complexity constricting agility. UZ Leuven wanted to upgrade its network to provide fast, reliable connectivity to support patient care and provide its biomedical team with a simpler way to securely connect smart medical devices.

UZ Leuven also wanted to streamline operations for the network engineering team. “We had several different generations of wireless LAN controller software, and we needed to do ‘big bang’ upgrades, which was not ideal for operations,” says Thomas Noppe, Team Lead IT at UZ Leuven.

The hospital wanted to make equipment tracking and asset management easier as its needs grew. It had long used its wireless network to track high value assets, but it wanted to expand its asset tracking and include smaller equipment without the cost and maintenance associated with physical Wi-Fi tags. A wireless network with integrated support for virtual Bluetooth Low Energy (vBLE) would reduce the cost and complexity of asset tracking.

UZ Leuven first deployed the Juniper AI-Native Network across its medical offices, pharmacy, kitchen, logistics, and other non-clinical areas. With the reliability and performance proven, the hospital’s next step is to roll out the AI-Native Network in clinical areas. “With Juniper, we can deploy the new access points during the day without disruption to the users,” says Noppe.

AIOps provides insights and automated actions that deliver a continuously assured experience for clinicians, staff, patients, and visitors, and frees up the IT team to focus on strategic work. The biomedical team can now onboard new connected medical devices quickly and securely, without the intervention of the IT team.

“The Juniper Mist portal is really intuitive,” says Noppe. “We can easily identify if a client or AP is having a problem, correlate the data to quickly diagnose problems, which reduces mean time to resolution.”

For UZ Leuven, a Juniper network delivers real business results beyond exceptional user and operator experiences. With the vBLE technology integrated into Juniper Access Points and Indoor Location Services for asset tracking, Belgium’s largest university hospital can locate medical equipment to support the delivery of timely, patient-centered care and speed up preventative maintenance.