The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE), is NHS Lothian’s single largest hospital, with 3 floors, 800+ beds, and 500 access points. The wireless design was created by an external company in 2015 and had never been validated. The NHS Lothian networking team explored the pros and cons of using an external company to perform the validation survey, or undertaking the project in-house. They needed to consider the risks, costs and outcome for both options, including the skill of the internal team and whether time would be better spent on other projects.
“We bought the solution from Ekahau because of the all-in price,” Duhre explains. “When we factored in the cost of the ESS license, Ekahau Sidekick™, a fairly high-end laptop, and associated accessories, it still only came to one-sixth of the price we were quoted by the external company.”