As one of the 12 health IT best practice areas, reliable and high-quality connectivity plays a fundamental and ongoing role in the support and expansion of health information technology that is required for health care and education providers of any size and type to serve the Triple Aim goals of CMS. Often an afterthought, OHN continues to address and shorten the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” as it relates to reliable, health care worthy broadband connectivity. Additionally, given the complexity and scope of this need, the organization will continue to advocate across the OHN, state and federal landscape for the strategy and resources needed to support the effective and proactive deployment and continued funding for the network infrastructures like OHN’s that are required to support the next generation of “patient centered” health care.

Network Design

With no single telecommunications (broadband) vendor having statewide presence or availability, OHN’s network architecture model was designed as a leased services network model. This means that OHN does not own any of the broadband infrastructure on our network. Instead, the telecommunications vendors (vendors) who choose to connect to us and meet our service level agreements own the broadband infrastructure that creates the physical network. This was a fundamental network decision made in consideration of our interest as much of the existing broadband infrastructure as possible in order to reduce costs and overbuilds in the state. It also provided OHN with the most inexpensive and scalable means to reach all corners of the state. Read more.

The Power of the Internet Exchange

The OHN utilizes the Northwest Access and Exchange (NWAX) in downtown Portland to provide our community with a hub and spoke model that joins together all our vendors networks at one central “hub” location. This is a critical component that provides a single hub location where all of our vendor networks can join (or peer) with each other. This creates a very simple yet powerful connection that allows for the quick and efficient exchange of data among our participants and plays a central role in OHN’s ability to provide the high quality connections and value that our participants currently receive. These connections among our network providers play another exciting role in that they also enable more traffic to remain in local to Oregon and improve connectivity across the state as a whole. And yet that’s just the beginning. Read more.