Faster access to critical data and better application performance can be a matter of life and death

DENVER, June 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- When caring for patients, every second counts. Immediate access to crucial data can mean more accurate and potentially lifesaving healthcare diagnoses or procedures. Reducing latency, which can improve speed of access to information and enable better application performance, has emerged as a key driver for hospitals and healthcare systems to implement Edge Computing strategies according to survey data from IDC Research and sponsored by Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN).

Experience the interactive Multimedia News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/85243514-lumen-healthcare-systems-idc-survey/

In fact, 46% of healthcare IT leaders who responded stated that latency - or the delay between an action and an application's response - needed to be an ultra-low 5 milliseconds for their organization's Edge Computing initiatives. When seconds can be the difference between life and death, downtime between systems or slow application performance is not an option.

"Healthcare workloads involve large sets of structured and unstructured data that need to be accessed as close to real time as possible, often times because critical clinical decision making can't take place without it," said Lynne A. Dunbrack, Group Vice President, IDC Health Insights, IDC Government Insights. "Edge Computing provides the speed of data delivery and speed of insight for decision making that healthcare providers ultimately want and need. Nearly half of healthcare organizations are planning their next investment in Edge Computing within the next year."

The importance of this investment, and the change it can make in patients' lives, becomes clear when considering some of the potentially lifesaving benefits for emergency medical services that rely on immediate access to critical data that can be enabled by Edge Computing:

• Emergency Department teams can receive instruction about patients on route to the hospital including vital signs, diagnostics, echocardiograms, patient history, or video. With critical diagnostic time saved, the Emergency Department team can better prepare for the patient's arrival and immediate treatment.
• Emergency vehicles can be optimally routed to avoid traffic delays, reducing response times.
• During a mass casualty incident, victims can be triaged to the appropriate care setting across multiple hospitals to avoid overwhelming a local healthcare system.

Learn how healthcare organizations can improve the patient experience by processing data at the edge: https://discover.lumen.com/l/edge-for-healthcare

Telemedicine and virtual visits, clinical and business collaboration, remote health monitoring, and smart medical campuses can also be enhanced with Edge Computing. Edge Computing can allow hospitals and health systems to create and provide innovative solutions by enabling large amounts of locally created data to be processed closer to where it is being captured. Reducing the distance information must travel to be analyzed and acted upon can significantly reduce latency. As mission-critical entities, hospitals and healthcare organizations need secure, immediate, 24 x 7 access to health information to enable effective clinical decision-making.

Additional Resources:

• Read the IDC InfoBrief Edge Computing: Transforming Healthcare by Increasing Resilience, April 2021 | IDC Doc. #US47492421 here: https://discover.lumen.com/l/edge-for-healthcare
• For more information on how Lumen is supporting edge computing, visit: https://lumen.com/edge

About Lumen Technologies:
Lumen is guided by our belief that humanity is at its best when technology advances the way we live and work. With approximately 450,000 route fiber miles and serving customers in more than 60 countries, we deliver the fastest, most secure platform for applications and data to help businesses, government and communities deliver amazing experiences. Learn more about the Lumen network, edge cloud, security, communication and collaboration solutions and our purpose to further human progress through technology at news.lumen.com/home, LinkedIn: /lumentechnologies, Twitter: @lumentechco, Facebook: /lumentechnologies, Instagram: @lumentechnologies and YouTube: /lumentechnologies. Lumen and Lumen Technologies are registered trademarks in the United States. 

SOURCE Lumen Technologies

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