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Revalidatiecentrum Roessingh Elevates Patient Care with a Future-Proof Network
Published: April 4, 2025
Just as a rehabilitation center revitalizes patients, helping them regain mobility, confidence, and independence, a modernized network steadily rejuvenates a healthcare facility, enabling seamless connectivity and efficient operations while accommodating future use cases and next-generation medical equipment. Benefitting from the smooth cooperation between Extreme Networks, Falco Networks, and Kappa Data, yet another healthcare customer in Benelux is elevating their patient care and operational excellence.
Revalidatiecentrum Roessingh is a rehabilitation center located in Enschede, a city and municipality in eastern Netherlands. Founded originally in 1948 as a rehabilitation facility for soldiers and civilians injured during World War II, the organization pioneered advancements in prosthetics, gait training, mobility recovery, and psychological support. Nearly 80 years later, Roessingh has grown into a leading treatment and care center in the region, supporting its citizens – whether afflicted by illness, accident, or traumatic events – in their recovery and reintegration with society.
Connectivity: the key enabler of modern patient care
Roessingh's IT environment encompasses IoT devices, a new patient data system, employees' IP phones, and streaming services in patient rooms. This complexity means the organization simply cannot afford to suffer from connectivity issues. The organization applies technology in diagnostics and treatment across the board, while its processes are completely dependent on IT.
One day, we needed to change a switch, and we lost internet connection for half an hour. IP phones didn’t work, our restaurant couldn’t process payments… With the digital environment that we have today, losing connectivity for a day would essentially mean the end for us. When I joined the organization a few years ago, it became clear to me we needed to renew the old wireless network and we needed it fast.
Total Control of the Network
For Marcel van de Bovenkamp, System Manager, Revalidatiecentrum Roessingh, he and his IT colleagues wanted to address the influx of connected, mobile devices and the growing obsolescence of medical equipment, requiring an impeding replacement in mid to short term. The team worked to define two goals: to future-proof the Wi-Fi infrastructure with a 6 GHz connectivity and to simplify network management. Falco Networks, a value-added reseller and systems integrator well-established in the Dutch market, proposed a new solution based on Extreme.
We combined AP4000, the very first Wi-Fi 6E enterprise-grade access points on the market, with the ExtremeCloud IQ Site Engine solution that allows the customer to manage both wired and wireless networks easily and efficiently, using an integrated dashboard with full visibility of the network and control over performance. And it proved to be a winning combination.
Personally, I used to work with Cisco Meraki, but the new solution from Extreme allows us greater fine-tuning and customization. The big step forward is the ability to manage not only the new access points, but also some 10-year-old edge and aggregation switches that we still use in our network. Another great feature is the seamless asset tracking – we no longer lose sight of the expensive medical equipment, often misplaced by the personnel. I must say, as a network administrator, I’m really pleased with this integrated dashboard.
Wi-Fi 6E: a rejuvenating force for healthcare organizations
After a thorough analysis and collaboration with Roessingh, Vincent Nijhof and his team developed a solution that not only meets the current needs but also supports future growth and technological advancements. Extreme AP4000 Wi-Fi 6E access points support the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequency bands, providing a robust foundation for whatever the center’s future may bring. The benefits include:
- Improved performance: The support for three frequency bands (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz) ensures that both current and future end devices can use the network without any problems, creating a future-proof platform. In the future, when more client devices utilize 6 GHz connectivity, the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands will be less congested, providing a cleaner RF environment, eliminating interference, and resulting in a faster and more efficient wireless experience for all users.
- Private Client Groups: Roessingh can now offer streaming services to patients as an alternative to traditional television, which not only reduces costs, but also provides more flexibility and comfort for patients.
- Asset Tracking: With the new Wi-Fi environment, Roessingh can easily locate assets, resulting in less search time for staff and more time for care and rehabilitation of patients.
- Innovation: Thanks to the higher bandwidth, Roessingh can also see greater adoption of innovation initiatives, specifically around virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications in the future.
Smooth Cooperation Across All Boards
Considering the nature of Roessingh's operations, an additional challenge for the network modernization process was ensuring a smooth transition to the new solution. As experienced ICT engineers, Falco Networks completed the migration and simultaneous expansion, involving additional floors and multiple buildings, moving from 100 to 225 access points in no time. How? With a proper mix of technology and people.
The AI environment in ExtremeCloud IQ simulated the radio environment based on construction drawings prior to the rollout, which gave us a perfect picture of the optimal access point locations. This automatic channel and frequency allocation saved us a lot of time and effort. We would also like to extend a special shout-out to our distribution partners from Kappa Data, who delivered everything we needed, when we needed.
What’s particularly great about this cooperation is that the transition was seamless for our staff and patients. Falco’s engineers took over the SSIDs from the old network, so no one noticed the migration. And thanks to the smart AI support, we had all the time to further optimize the VLANs and network routing.
Network modernization at your own pace
The implementation of the new Wi-Fi has now developed into a full-blown, long-term collaboration between Roessingh, Falco Networks, Kappa Data, and Extreme Networks. Vincent Nijhof and his team have now been asked to replace a number of outdated switches with new Extreme PoE switches. These devices will work seamlessly with Fabric Connect, enabling Roessingh to achieve even more flexible and efficient network management. The goal is to completely replace the core of the network over the course of 2025.
Considering the cost and complexity of replacing an entire network infrastructure in an organization like ours, we wanted to take a step-by-step approach and gradually modernize our legacy infrastructure, making it easier and less costly to manage in the process, while at the same time ensuring the IT environment continues to run perfectly all the time. Extreme Networks and Falco Networks made that wish come true.
Thanks to our joint efforts, we have helped Roessingh realize a future-proof network that supports their care and rehabilitation services even more effectively. It is always an honor for us to work with organizations that place a high value on innovation, and Roessingh is a perfect example of this. We are confident that this new network solution will not only contribute to Roessingh's operational efficiency but will also further improve the lives of their patients.
To learn more about how Roessingh and similar facilities are leveraging Extreme’s solutions to build network resilience and future-proof operations, visit our full Case Study Library.