Planning the network for a new hospital: ten decisions to get right early
A hospital's network carries patient records, nurse calls, lab results, CCTV and the Wi-Fi every clinician depends on. Most of what makes it reliable is decided on the drawings — long before the first cable is pulled.
In short: involve the IT and low-current designer at design stage, give every floor a proper telecom room on backed-up power, run fibre between them, cable generously for Wi-Fi, separate clinical, device and guest traffic, and insist on test results and as-built records at handover.
1. Bring the IT designer in at design stage
Cable routes, telecom rooms and power need space in the building. Adding them after the walls are plastered costs far more than drawing them in from the start, and coordinating with the main contractor early avoids clashes with electrical and mechanical services.
2. Plan the telecom rooms
Each floor or wing needs a secure, ventilated room close enough to every outlet that copper runs stay within the standard 100-metre channel limit. The main equipment room should be away from water, with space to grow.
3. Fibre for the backbone
Link the main room to every telecom room with fibre: multimode within a building and single-mode between buildings or over longer distances. Run spare cores — they cost little now and save a new installation later.
4. Copper cabling with headroom
Category 6A to Wi-Fi access points and high-power PoE devices gives headroom for faster Wi-Fi generations; Category 6 is fine for most desks and phones. Design to the international structured cabling standards (TIA-568 or ISO/IEC 11801); TIA-1179 adds guidance specific to healthcare buildings.
5. Containment with spare capacity
Cable trays, trunking and conduits should be sized with room to add cables later, and kept separate from power cabling where the standards require.
6. Power that does not fail
Telecom rooms, servers, nurse call and core network equipment belong on UPS backed by the hospital generator. A network that drops during a power cut also drops nurse calls and patient records.
7. Wi-Fi planned room by room
Hospitals are hard for Wi-Fi: concrete, lead-lined imaging rooms and many devices. Plan access points with a predictive survey from the drawings, then verify with an on-site survey before handover.
8. Separate networks for different jobs
Clinical systems, medical devices, nurse call and PA, CCTV, administration and guest Wi-Fi should run on separated networks (VLANs) with firewall rules between them. A visitor's phone should never share a network with patient records.
9. Low-current systems together
Nurse call, PA, CCTV, access control and the data network share routes, rooms and power. Designing them together — ideally with one responsible partner — avoids gaps between installers.
10. Testing, labelling and documentation
Insist that every link is tested and the results handed over, every outlet and port is labelled to a consistent scheme (TIA-606), and as-built drawings are provided. Without them, every future change starts with guesswork.
Before you sign off the design, ask
- Where are the telecom rooms, and are all outlets within 100 metres?
- Is there fibre with spare cores between every room?
- What cable category goes to Wi-Fi access points?
- Which equipment is on UPS and generator?
- How are clinical, device and guest networks separated?
- What test results and records will we receive at handover?
We delivered the cabling and fibre backbone at Yellow Power Hospital, Accra, and installed servers, workstations, nurse call, Wi-Fi and PA at the Fomena and Kumawu district hospitals. Hospital IT · Discuss your hospital project