How FiberLink Tends to the Healthcare Industry

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Like many industries, healthcare has come to rely heavily on high-resolution imaging and secure high-bandwidth transport of media over longer and longer distances. All of these requirements have made fiber optic cabling — and products from the Artel FiberLink® family — a great fit for medical facilities and applications.

Fiber is especially appealing for medical applications such as MRIs and other types of imaging, where resistance to EMI and support for uncompressed video are critical requirements for video transport. By moving high-resolution images over fiber, facilities can ensure that the magnets used in imaging don’t compromise the images themselves, and they can preserve the pristine image quality that’s so vital in helping medical professionals make accurate assessments and diagnoses.

In many early instances, and still today, fiber supported the transport of images from medical machinery to a nearby MRI station for viewing, a short hop. From these initial applications in imaging, it was a natural jump to distance learning, where video and audio are moved over fiber — uncompressed and in real time — to another room, building, or campus for educational purposes.

University hospitals have deployed FiberLink products to transport video of live procedures to a lecture hall, effectively using fiber for secure live streaming of uncompressed video across campus or even across the city. Again, fiber delivers the distance and bandwidth capabilities that copper cannot while also meeting the medical industry’s higher bar for secure transport.

As healthcare facilities have upgraded to new technologies and formats, the FiberLink family has been ready with solutions. From the days when facilities used analog cameras and other analog systems on through VGA, SDI, and DVI cameras — FiberLink products met the need, making it easy to move audio, video, data, and PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom,) camera control signals over fiber.

Artel’s FiberLink products have also supported the healthcare industry’s technological evolution by accommodating both single-mode and multimode fiber. Each has its ideal applications, but it’s not uncommon for a facility to find that installed optical cabling isn’t the best match for the devices being used for media transport. (Most often, someone has installed multimode fiber when single-mode would be the better choice.)

Many facilities, including university campuses and healthcare facilities, are mixed physical plants, where multimode was installed early on before single-mode really took over. With its long history in supplying fiber solutions, Artel has been one of the only manufacturers to support both multimode and single-mode, allowing users to stick with a single vendor despite varied fiber types.

As innovation continues in using media to enhance patient care and to improve educational programming, fiber will continue to play a central role in healthcare applications. The expert team at Artel has both the experience and expertise to specify the right fiber solutions, and we’re always working to be sure we’re ready to help customers in healthcare meet new challenges and opportunities.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at how FiberLink addresses challenges and opportunities in sports.

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