VOIP Enterprise News: Virtua Health Selects NEC to Develop Role-Based Communications for Healthcare
Healthcare System Selects the UNIVERGE®360 Approach to Achieve a Unified Business Environment
NEC Unified Solutions, Inc., a global leader in enterprise business communications, today announced a large-scale unified communications (UC) deployment with Virtua Health, a multi-hospital healthcare system based in Marlton, NJ. Building on a strong 11-year relationship with Virtua, NEC is implementing an IP communications migration that includes all aspects of the NEC UNIVERGE®360 portfolio – from infrastructure and applications to services, ongoing support and monitoring.
Virtua plans, through advanced IP technology, to enhance a proven communications environment that allows hospital staff and employees to connect quickly and reliably. It will also leverage UC and specialized healthcare applications to enhance Virtua’s productivity and continue to deliver an outstanding patient experience. After evaluating the options offered, Virtua selected NEC UC and IP-based solutions, including its UNIVERGE UM8500 unified messaging platform that will support productivity-enhancing UC applications, such as unified messaging, telephone and call systems and patient find-me / follow-me. With its UC and mobility features, NEC’s comprehensive UNIVERGE360 approach also brings the healthcare system closer to its goal of becoming a paperless and wireless environment.
“At Virtua, our primary focus is providing the best care possible for our patients, and reliable, streamlined communications is critical for us to make this mission a reality,” said Maria Foschi, MBA, Assistant Vice President, Information Services, Virtua Health. “NEC was the clear choice and partner for Virtua to implement our communications technology migration because of its strong roadmap, comprehensive solution set and proven ability to execute with healthcare providers and other large corporations.”
The Virtua solutions are based on NEC’s recently announced UNIVERGE360 communications model, which enables businesses to fully integrate employee roles with automated business processes, resulting in a unified organization. NEC will combine new and existing infrastructure, applications, software, services and partnerships to deliver an enterprise-wide UNIVERGE360 solution to Virtua’s thousands of employees.
“As with any healthcare enterprise, Virtua Health directly links effective communications between employees, patients and their families to administering the best possible healthcare,” said Louis Van De Water, vice president and general manager of eastern regional sales, NEC Unified Solutions. “With NEC’s UNIVERGE360 communications model, Virtua is bringing technology in-house that can help them address not just communications, but also improved patient care and resource utilization by hospital staff, as well as improved medical staff retention by giving them the latest communication tools to more quickly access the people and information they need.”
NEC solutions to be deployed at Virtua Health include a number of unified communications applications, communications servers and services, including:
Unified Communications:
* UNIVERGE UM8500 Unified Messaging System: As the feature-rich unified messaging platform for NEC’s UC for Enterprise solution set, UM8500 is the first UM solution to include VideoMail, Find Me/Follow Me capability and ViewCall for desktop call control. UM8500 will ultimately replace all of Virtua’s end-of-life voice messaging systems.
* UNIVERGE UA5200 Healthcare Attendant Consoles: The UA5200 enables greater productivity through convergence of communications and business processes. The console also gives Virtua’s attendants instant access to vital presence information and enables them to use specialized healthcare-oriented instant access modules. More specifically, the UA5200 Healthcare Attendant will provide Virtua with Room Direct capability by automatically assigning DID numbers assigned to patients as they are admitted and routing calls to whichever rooms they are assigned during their stay.
* eTHOS® Call Center Software: This software gives Virtua’s call center advanced IVR applications, including patient appointment reminders that automatically alert patients of appointments and allows them to confirm or reschedule, speech recognition and call center advantages such as instant caller information when a call comes in.
Unified Infrastructure:
* UNIVERGE SV7000 and SV8500 Communications Servers: These multi-purpose IP communications servers provides Virtua with the ability to combine converged architecture applications, such as unified communications, presence, collaboration and softphones, in addition to delivering enhanced telephony features.
* UNIVERGE OW5000: This media server provides Virtua with presence information and is also the operational platform for NEC’s UC for Enterprise solutions. NEC’s OW5000 also provides open interfaces to interoperate with popular third-party UC solutions and enables developers to create applications to tightly integrate with other NEC solutions.
* UNIVERGE MA4000 Enterprise Management System: Centralized management is an essential part of a complete voice solution in today’s enterprise environments, and the MA4000 has the ability to manage all of a Virtua’s communications servers simultaneously and with virtually no daily interaction required by the administrator.
NEC Services & Partnerships:
* NEC’s Managed Services team is monitoring and managing the hospital’s Voice over IP network using its Remote Managed Services through its Network Operations Center in Irving, TX, as well as on-site technical support. NEC also is providing voice quality and data infrastructure monitoring, allowing for immediate identification and resolution of any issues that arise with the system.
* Additionally, based on NEC’s long-standing Cisco Gold Certification, NEC is installing customer-provided Cisco LAN/WAN equipment.
For more information about Virtua Health, visit http://www.virtua.org or call 1-888-VIRTUA-3 (1-888-847-8823).
For more information about NEC Unified Solutions, visit http://www.necunified.com.