4 Key Advantages of SD-WAN Technology for Healthcare

The healthcare industry’s response to the pandemic accelerated two trends that were already underway: more technology options for patients and providers alike, and a larger perimeter for where and when access to that technology will be needed.

“The data center of yore was inside the four walls of the hospital, but the future state is very distributed,” says Christopher Logan, executive healthcare adviser of the Global Industries Group at VMware. “Hospitals are looking to modernize their infrastructure and provide technology to support new care models.”

For organizations used to deploying and managing on-premises hardware and software, this future state presents networking and security challenges. That’s where software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) can play a key role, according to Logan, who previously worked in information security roles for two health systems.

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SD-WAN enables the delivery of virtualized resources over a WAN using public and private internet connections. Like software-defined networking, SD-WAN uses software to control network traffic among data centers, branch offices and cloud-based services.

“As a provider, you can define the new edge for your network. It could be a remote branch location, the patient’s home or a gateway to a public cloud service,” Logan says.

As healthcare continues to expand beyond the traditional...