Shedding the Light on the Benefits of Dark Fiber for the Healthcare Industry

As an IT manager in healthcare, there are a lot of pieces to juggle, trends to stay on top of and hundreds of users to manage. As security and reliability become increasingly important in today’s digital world, you might be wondering if it’s time to make the move over to the dark side — or dark fiber, that is.

What is dark fiber? Dark fiber refers to fiber-optic cables that aren’t currently in use. Unlike lit fiber, which is already “lit” by a service provider’s electronics to transmit data, dark fiber is essentially a blank slate, exclusively leased to your organization, giving you more freedom to manage your network in a way that works best for your healthcare facility. Could dark fiber be a good option for your facility? There are pros and cons to weigh, but when it comes to ensuring top security, scalability and bandwidth, dark fiber can be hard to beat.

Why Should Healthcare Organizations Choose Dark Fiber?

With dark fiber, the fiber is leased for exclusive ownership, giving you full control to design and manage your network in a way that best meets the needs of both patients and healthcare workers. Since it’s essentially like having your own private network, dark fiber can provide nearly unlimited bandwidth and is highly secure. As healthcare organizations rapidly adopt new technologies and offer bandwidth-guzzling services, like virtual healthcare and cloud-based patient monitoring tools, having a reliable and secure infrastructure in place is more important than ever. Let’s take a closer look at why so many healthcare organizations are seeing a bright future with dark fiber.

Security

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest advantages of dark fiber, especially within the healthcare industry, is security. As healthcare organizations transmit an increasingly enormous amount of highly sensitive data on a daily basis, having complete control over your network allows you to ensure patient information is shared as securely as possible and your data transmission procedures comply with federal and state regulations, including HIPAA. In addition, unlike lit fiber’s shared networks that have several entry points, dark fiber is different. It is only accessible at the two endpoints of the fiber-optic cable, limiting the potential for cyber attacks.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Another major benefit of dark fiber is virtually limitless bandwidth. Dark fiber allows healthcare organizations to scale operations as new technologies and tools are adopted, as patient populations grow and as the number of healthcare employees evolves. With dark fiber, boosting your bandwidth is much faster, simpler and more affordable. Why? On a dark fiber network, you don’t have to rely on a provider to grant you more capacity — and what’s even better, since you are in control, you have more control over costs.

Fixed Costs

Knowing your costs are fixed throughout your agreement empowers your organization to budget more confidently and achieve long-term savings. With a predictable cost structure, financial management becomes easier and decision-making processes are streamlined.

High Performance and Reliability

Beyond offering unlimited bandwidth, top security and consistent costs, using dark fiber ensures that your organization’s data is the only traffic being transmitted across your network, which can significantly reduce latency. In addition, hospitals need a connection that is 100% reliable, especially as they continue to utilize more new technologies, such as AI, cloud-based applications and devices that often play a key role in life-saving medical procedures.

All in all, a secure, reliable connection via a dark fiber network can ensure a bright path forward for healthcare organizations looking to support bandwidth-hungry technology, optimize operations, streamline information sharing across medical teams, improve healthcare employee job satisfaction and most importantly, provide a top-notch patient experience.

Learn More About the Benefits of Dark Fiber

Are you interested in learning more about dark fiber? Segra has extensive experience helping healthcare organizations find a dark fiber solution to meet their specific needs. We will engineer, install and maintain the fiber infrastructure, while you enjoy unlimited bandwidth and enhanced security to keep your IT operations running smoothly and provide exceptional patient care.

Learn more about Segra’s dark fiber services and how we specialize in meeting the unique needs of healthcare organizations.