One of the true gems of the “Gem City” is Dayton Children’s Hospital, a not-for-profit pediatric care provider and leading advocate for children in the Dayton region. With a history of innovation spanning more than a half-century, Dayton Children’s recently turned to altafiber to help it better meet the needs of today’s tech-savvy parents.
“The parents of our children are part of the millennial and Gen Z generations, and they are digital natives,” said Debbie Feldman, president and CEO of Dayton Children’s. “They want to be able to support their children’s health in a digital way. They want to be able to make an appointment at 10 at night when they finally have a chance to take a breath after their children are in bed. They want to be able to track their children’s health through the use of wearables and other kinds of technology. All of these technologies and new digital approaches are going to be instrumental to how we care for children in the future and how we monitor their health.”
Innovating to serve the entire community
As Dayton Children’s began moving toward this new way of providing health care to children, they realized it would be critical to have a partner who could ensure reliable high-speed internet — not only for parents and older children, but for doctors, nurses and other caregivers. We’re honored that they turned to altafiber.
altafiber began building its relationship with the hospital during the pandemic, enabling telehealth visits by successfully applying for grants to provide mobile devices and access to free high-speed internet in public housing areas. Even in the post-lockdown era, telehealth continues to play an important and growing role in these communities.
“We’re beginning to utilize wearables that allow us to get readings on blood pressure, and even see inside the ear and throat during telehealth visits,” Feldman said. “We can’t use those important technologies if our families don’t have equal access to the internet.”
Telehealth can also play a potentially life-saving role for children experiencing a mental health crisis by enabling visual contact with a therapist when it matters most.
Upgrades and new capabilities
In addition, the hospital’s collaboration with altafiber is benefiting the Dayton community in other ways as they roll out a multi-year plan to improve connectivity at the main hospital and install more reliable data connections to over two dozen satellite locations throughout the region. The early stages of this plan include connectivity for the hospital’s new Specialty Care Center, plus a major overhaul of the distributed antenna system (DAS) that provides cellular access for three national carriers throughout the main downtown campus.
“We needed to make sure that we had really good connectivity for cellular signals, for our doctors, nurses and other caregivers and also for the patient families,” said J.D. Whitlock, chief information officer of Dayton Children’s. “We selected altafiber for this very important project.
“Put yourself in the situation of a family member of one of our patients. Maybe your kid had a terrible accident. This may be the most stressful day of your life, and you’re trying to let family members know what’s going on. Can you imagine looking at your phone, having only one bar, and not being able to communicate with family members? Nobody wants that. We also need to make sure that our clinicians have good mobile connectivity so they can access applications on their mobile devices. For example, one of our surgeons can now check on the status of a patient while they’re moving from one part of the hospital to another,” he said.
Watch the video through the link below to learn more about how altafiber and Dayton Children’s are working together to bring about meaningful improvements to children’s health in the Greater Dayton region.
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