Paessler PRTG helps ALYN Hospital save lives by monitoring ventilated children

There are seven people in the IT team at ALYN Hospital, out of which, 1-2 are focused on network monitoring. Before looking for a new network monitoring solution, the IT team was already using Microsoft Operations Manager but it realised that it needed a more robust, reliable and easy to use system. The main reasons for installing a network monitoring solution were so that the IT team would have greater visibility and control and better network optimisation of the medical equipment.

As Uri Inbar, Director of IT, ALYN Hospital explained: “We were experiencing problems with our previous SCOM system and we felt that we didn’t have enough insight into the preventative maintenance needs of the network. We wanted to monitor software, services and medical devices such as ventilators for the children in our care and were looking for a system which would allow us to do effective preventative maintenance to avoid any potential issues.”

Introducing PRTG

As a result, Inbar and his team turned to Paessler PRTG Network Monitor, initially taking out a free trial: “We found the overall setup of PRTG very intuitive and we could set it up ourselves without needing any additional support. It was exactly what we were looking for.”

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, PRTG helped ALYN Hospital to become much more efficient: “We had to implement a lot of structural changes within the hospital which involved moving ventilated children from one floor to another. This was a huge project involving setting up a big network of new network links, controllers and monitors. Having PRTG beside us was reassuring because we could have a good overview of the newly installed department, its status and connectivity so it helped us to go through this process more easily.”

In addition, PRTG has proved to be very effective when it comes to preventative maintenance by predicting potential problems and resolving them before they have an impact on the hospital and the patients. Inbar explained: “This lets our therapists and doctors work smoothly without them needing to raise a support ticket when they experience problems. It also helps us to monitor vital medical devices. We have several departments of ventilated children who are monitored by several devices. Some of these devices are connected to the network so having PRTG has helped us to pinpoint some problems which might be lifesaving in some cases so this is obviously a big plus.”