Victoria's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has selected a $900,000 data network from Nortel to support its critical health service applications, including a growing number of converged voice and data services.

The new network replaces an existing Entrasys network, and will provide the backbone for an increased amount of data to be communicated between employees and healthcare workers at the facility.

Peter Mac IT manager Len Gemelli said the recent upgrade of the centre's communications network, and the introduction of new health application services meant the data network infrastructure was in need of a major refresh.

"Last year we began migrating our communications to IP technology, with the view of delivering converged Internet Telephony and multimedia services to doctors, staff and patients," said Gemelli. "We're also looking to deploy advanced services such as filmless radiology, and so needed a robust network platform to support this and other mission-critical healthcare applications along with our expanded communications infrastructure."

Gemelli said the requirements listed in Peter Mac's selective tender included Power over Ethernet (PoE) to power IP telephony handsets from the network, intrusion detection and protection to safeguard information on the network, and future-proofing to extend the life of the network for at least four years.

"We wanted the new network to give us the redundancy and security critical to information-sensitive environments like ours, but also to provide enough power and bandwidth to support the integrated communications systems we've put in place for our patients and doctors," he added.

Nortel - which last year won the contract to overhaul Peter Mac's telephone system with an IP-enabled PBX - proposed an end-to-end Gigabit switched solution based on two Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600s at the core, and Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5510s and 5520s at the edge. A third Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 provides a separate environment for development and testing without affecting the core production system.

"One of the projects we're currently running involves a picture archiving service (PACS) for radio therapy," said Gemelli. "Effectively all our x-ray scans will be completely digital, saving us time and money from getting them onto film and into doctors' hands. It does put the onus, however, on a strong network infrastructure for quickly and securely moving and storing these images, and this was the main business driver behind the design we opted for.

Gemelli believes that it's critical to have a strong data network to support a converged voice network. "We have a hybrid portable and traditional Internet Telephony system, with cordless Voice over IP phones and traditional IP phones throughout the hospital. The benefit of Nortel's solution is that we now have an end-to-end voice and data network based on Nortel's proven equipment that gives us the full range of IP services we need without compromising on the foundation of the data network."

Mark Stevens, president, Australia and New Zealand, Nortel, said the growing relationship between Peter Mac and Nortel is a direct result of Nortel's strength-in-depth in both data and IP-enabled converged networking.