All,
I am looking for an example, presentation, or other detail of setting up or testing a MESH to support a medical disaster. I have searched the forums and the net but not found anything. We want to approach 2 regional hospitals with the idea to link them via a mesh network and provide emergency services in an emcomm situation. Would like to show them an example of how it would work, what services could be provided, etc. Would be great to show if some other group has already set up a similar function.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Ron K7OPA
I am looking for an example, presentation, or other detail of setting up or testing a MESH to support a medical disaster. I have searched the forums and the net but not found anything. We want to approach 2 regional hospitals with the idea to link them via a mesh network and provide emergency services in an emcomm situation. Would like to show them an example of how it would work, what services could be provided, etc. Would be great to show if some other group has already set up a similar function.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Ron K7OPA
The mesh is a wide area network. The mesh is an in independent internet like network that behaves a lot like the internet across the mesh, and a LAN when your plugged into the local ports of the mesh node.
Many tools exist already that work on a routed IP network. Many of these can easily be made accessible over a mesh. How that is done will depend on each served agency and how they need/want to interact with the system. I can think of something like a medical information exchange that displays number of beds available which could be on an internal website that could be exposed over the mesh.
Other local groups use Winlink for data on packet, mesh provides a massive speed (and file size) increase on these existing tools.
Working with local groups (if they exist) to understand what is already done will help you tailor it to how the mesh can improve the existing infrastructure and ultimately expand the system. Using existing tools means you only have to design the integration not the tools.
I am not sure we should be providing any services other than the communications link. It's important to understand what they already have in place. In this area there is quite an elaborate system for things like beds available (and much more).
http://www.novaha.org/nvha/assets/File/9.11.01%20to%209.11.11.pdf
They can still use the last-gasp broadband link that hams would provide as a backup to their backup. Exactly what they use it for is up to them IMHO.
We are in the early stages of setting up nodes on two of the hospitals in the list so I am interested in this topic.
We already have interest here locally for high speed data exchange above and beyond UHF Winlink capabilities, We don't want to show up with a network and a bunch of toys and tell people what 'they need'. We are trying to get a feel for what would be required when all other comms fail, in a medical environment.
From my side it would seem logical that providing voice and high speed data (email, remote printing, efax, etc.) would be of interest for a hospital that had been cut off from the world for whatever reason, BUT we want them to tell us what they need before we rush into anything. As is usually the case they don't always know what they don't know - thus we wanted to provide them with examples of how others are using the capability.
I was just hoping someone had already had this conversation.
Thanks again for the thoughts.
The AREDN Project was only launched in February, 2015. Prior to 16 months ago connecting hospitals was inconceivable. Many still have the misconception this is a WRT56G-based ham novelty.
Andre, K6AH
I am aware of a MESH intiative in Anchorage Alaska that has already installed two 3.4 Ghz sectors on their major hospital. These are all published on the AREDN map.
How's that for starters?
Tom - K1KY MTEARS/Southmesh Operations Coordinator
Andre, K6AH
I'm going to play devils advocate for a moment:
That being said, a model similar to what HDSCS (Hospital Disaster Support Communications System) http://www.hdscs.org/ might be in order. Maybe pre-mounting the radio / antenna, and having the hospital provide fiber to the EOC where the amateur would set up a stand-alone PC for ARDEN/MESH.
73 Martin
What follows is my personal opinion...
The Amateur Radio role in disaster communications is when all else fails. EOCs and Trauma Centers/Hospitals have a primary comm plan which generally uses Internet, telephone, cell, etc. They also have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) which defines their fallback modes of operation when those primary means fail. RF-based IP networks are commonplace examples of these modes. But even these modes are failure-prone which can come in a variety of forms... some involving their own IT infrastructure.
I used to think integrating with their IT network was the answer, but it's not for several reasons.
Where we shine is when that infrastructure and their BCP needs to be abandoned because it is no longer working... and as those of us who have supported disasters know, it happens frequently enough.
So I encourage you to think in terms of building services which are valuable under *those* circumstances: chat, email, VoIP (even BYO cell phone VoIP) utilizing IP-dial or network-based PBX solutions. I also believe agency-specific tools should be developed to "minimalistically" deliver what they consider critical... at least to start. What those are, we won't know until we have more time with this technology. Afterall, this stuff has only really been available to hams for the last year and a half.
I'm eager to see what we all can do with it in the years to come!
Andre, K6AH
Joe AE6XE
In my other post, "in our professionalized world today", I was eluding that "when all else fails" is being commercialized and formalized by organization structure and processes like ICS. I suspect, since and evolving out of Katrina, if we, Amateur Radio part 97, are not on a serving entity's 'plan' directly or daisy chained, we aren't going to be considered as resources to utilize in a disaster, particularly for ICS centric entities.
Andre, I bump into the Orange County Hospital Amateur radio folks here and there, but never dug into what is occurring. FM voice services doesn't strike me as a 1st or even 2nd level BCP plan for the operation of a hospital today given the dependency on data communications including VOIP. By the time they have reached the need to do FM voice services, wouldn't this mean that everything necessary to operate the hospital has already failed? That their 'data' centric BCP plan and all else has already failed--they are back to the stone age and this era part 97 voice service is within the purpose?
Joe AE6XE
HDSCS considers a telephone system outage at an Orange County hospital a crisis. Check out their website: http://www.hdscs.org/ The outage throws them back into the stone age because they have made no other provision for this event. Phone outages are predictable, and in my opinion, a hospital owes it to the community they serve to have a BCP that restores that functionally without involving hams taking time off of work to man their "crisis".
If it were an earthquake that damaged their phone system it would be a completely justifiable call-out of hams... the hospital can't do anything to stop the earthquake. They can do something to mitigate the impact of the predictable phone outage... they've just elected to use the free services of hams instead.
Again... my opinion.
Andre
I also see from visiting my local Hospital in Orange County that voice doesn't seem to be the mechanism in use to perform the primary services, rather computers on carts that roll around. I'm sure the phone system and voice was a critical system and a 'crisis' when it was not functioning in the past. I wonder if that is still true today.
Joe AE6XE
Andre
I wasn't ignoring your question. Very interesting question and got me thinking. I haven't thought of digging that far into "their" internal planning documents. We do have "some" written MOU's with "some" of our hospitals, but not all of them. We do have training requirements and ID badges issued by the hospitals for those qualified and authorized to support them. We also "exercise" with our State Emergency Management and State Health agency twice a year with scenarios that involve hospital communications. Our last exercise included a specific component that involved our field units in each county that has a trauma hospital to report the ER and bed availability status. This specific scenario exercises the possible failure of a statewide reporting system for such data. Our big concern in Tennessee is preparing for "The Big One" when the New Madrid Fault divides us into two countries!
I'm quite familiar with April, WA6OPS, and what HDSCS does in Orange County. When the hospital telephone PBX fails they call in hams to shadow important people throughout the hospital.
While I understand why hams think this is a worthy and noble cause, I personally disagree with that approach because it utilizes Ham Radio as a part of the hospital's Business Continuity Plan and that plan should use commercially available services, not Part 97. HDSCS is giving the hospital a free ride. They should purchase their own radios for these important people and commercial license to operate them.
Again... only my opinion here.
Andre