Software Defined Networking in the Healthcare Industry

By Matt Madawi, Solutions Architect

Learn why Software Defined Networking (SDN) is essential for interconnected healthcare, and how you can adopt it.

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a technological overhaul, and COVID-19 isn’t (entirely) to blame.

Telemedicine, AI diagnostics, and wearable devices that constantly beam patient data to doctors are no longer futuristic concepts – they’re here, and they’re reshaping how care is delivered. But beneath the buzzwords lies a fundamental truth: None of this works without a rock-solid digital backbone, like that provided by a software-defined network.

In this blog, we’ll break down why SDN is essential for interconnected healthcare, what it means for the future of medicine, and how you can adopt it (it’s easier than you might think).

What is software-defined networking?

This modern connectivity method reimagines how networks are managed by shifting control from hardware to software. Instead of relying on traditional routers and switches to handle network traffic, SDN uses software-based controllers to manage and direct data flows across the network. This approach centralizes control, increases flexibility, and improves network visibility.

At its core, SDN separates the network’s control plane (the part that decides where traffic goes) from the data plane (the part that actually moves the traffic via hardware). This separation allows a centralized software controller (or your own custom APIs) to oversee the entire network and make decisions based on real-time data.

SDN plays a critical role in creating and managing virtual networks, enabling users to segment their physical network into multiple virtual networks or merge devices across separate physical networks into a unified virtual environment. This flexibility makes it easier to deploy, manage, and scale cloud-based services at scale.

How does SDN differ from traditional networks?

Think of a legacy network like a train system where every train driver makes decisions independently, unaware of what’s happening on other tracks. If a route is blocked, delays ripple through and rerouting takes time and effort.

SDN, on the other hand, is like an air traffic control system for your network. A centralized controller monitors everything in real time – tracking data flows, optimizing routes, and rerouting traffic as needed. For example, if a business needs to scale up for a big e-commerce sale, SDN can quickly allocate bandwidth and prioritize traffic to ensure smooth operations.

Unlike legacy architectures, which rely on static, hardware-based configurations, SDN uses software to adjust and adapt instantly. This makes it ideal for dynamic, cloud-based workloads where speed, flexibility, and efficiency are critical.

Benefits of software-defined networking in healthcare

Improved agility and scalability

For healthcare providers leveraging hybrid or multicloud strategies, SDN is a more agile way to manage your connectivity. Rapidly scale your networks to accommodate new facilities, technologies, services, and platforms without overhauling any physical infrastructure. You can also manage increased real-time data flows with ease by simply scaling up bandwidth with your SDN provider.

Network customizability

With APIs, you can integrate your SDN seamlessly with your cloud platforms for faster deployment and task automation. For example, you could set APIs to:

• dynamically adjust bandwidth between your data centers or cloud environments during peak usage or special events
• dynamically apply security policies based on network changes
• automatically create, update, or delete Virtual Cross Connects (VXCs) based on real-time demand
• provision and manage connections to multiple cloud providers
• track performance metrics like latency, packet loss, and jitter, delivering them to your network monitoring dashboards
• retrieve real-time billing and usage information and integrate it into your financial systems
• generate reports on network usage, changes, and performance over time.

Enhanced network reliability

SDN’s centralized control and automated failover mechanisms ensure minimal downtime, even during peak usage or unexpected failures. This keeps healthcare networks operational during peak demand periods and reduces downtime, which in healthcare improves patient outcomes, allows for uninterrupted care, and sustains revenue from essential services – all while maintaining patient trust.

Cost and resource optimization

Switching to SDN reduces manual intervention, freeing up IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of day-to-day network management. By automating network tasks and optimizing resource allocation, healthcare providers can reduce operational expenses and redirect savings to areas that directly enhance patient care such as staffing, medical equipment, or expanded services.

Better data flow and collaboration

SDN enables seamless connectivity between departments and facilities to ensure uninterrupted data flow across hospitals, clinics, and laboratories. With scalable bandwidth and reduced downtime, hospitals, clinics, and laboratories can better coordinate and share critical information for timely and informed patient care.

Stronger security

SDN enhances security by giving you the ability to move sensitive patient data from the public internet to private connections. Features like microsegmentation can also isolate sensitive data to prevent breaches, while automated threat detection and response can safeguard patient records. Incorporate security-focused APIs to take your network protection a step further.

Compliance support

With SDN, healthcare providers can enforce data governance and security protocols at every layer to more easily achieve compliance with strict healthcare data regulations like HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act. The elasticity of SDN also makes it ideal for addressing regional data governance standards, and adjusting your network to accommodate changes in these standards over time.

Software-defined networking applications in healthcare

Enhance telemedicine and remote patient monitoring

While COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, these technologies were already becoming critical and often preferred methods of delivering care as they offer convenience, accessibility, and continuity for patients and providers alike.

Reliable, high-speed networks powered by SDN ensure seamless telehealth consultations and uninterrupted monitoring of patients through IoT devices.

Support AI-driven diagnostics and advanced analytics

SDN supports the low-latency data flow essential for AI-driven diagnostics and advanced analytics, enabling real-time processing of imaging, pattern detection, and diagnostic assistance. And by integrating with tools like APIs and Terraform, SDN streamlines the deployment and management of these data-intensive applications, improving their scalability and performance in healthcare environments.

Seamlessly integrate e-health records

With SDN, healthcare providers can centralize and synchronize e-health records across multiple facilities—from medical imaging to specialist reports—to ensure consistent access, data integrity, and streamlined coordination of patient care.

Virtualize big data

SDN accelerates cloud adoption by enabling healthcare organizations to virtualize and securely store massive datasets, making big data more accessible and manageable for analysis and innovation. This also opens the door for the integration of ML models.

Advance patient care through AI and predictive analytics

SDN enables real-time data processing to support AI models, which are set to help the healthcare industry predict health risks, recommend proactive interventions, and accelerate medical research. As a result, providers will be able to deliver more personalized and preventive patient care.

Facilitate IoT and wearable integration for continuous patient monitoring

SDN enables secure, continuous communication between wearable devices and healthcare systems, maintaining low-latency connections regardless of the location or number of endpoints. Interconnecting this system enhances patient monitoring and enables more responsive, data-driven care.

Get fast, reliable direct internet to support modern healthcare networking

A direct internet solution can optimize the speed and flexibility SDN provides. By delivering consistent and reliable bandwidth, direct internet supports seamless telemedicine sessions, real-time data processing for AI diagnostics, and uninterrupted IoT device communication for patient monitoring.

With the right solution (like Megaport Internet), you can integrate scalable, secure direct internet solutions across your SDN.

Use case: Zuellig Pharma’s digital transformation

Zuellig Pharma is one of the largest healthcare services groups in Asia, providing world-class distribution, digital, and commercial services. To realize its vision of becoming a technological and digital innovations hub for the healthcare industry, the company prepared a digital expansion and transformation plan. But first, the team knew they would need a more solid foundation for moving and storing data.

Zuellig Pharma decided to underpin its digital transformation strategy by creating an intelligent hybrid and multicloud architecture using Megaport’s SDN as the foundation. This resilient data integration layer facilitated fluid data exchange between its growing set of digital endpoints while allowing them to grow effortlessly.

By choosing Megaport, Zuellig Pharma could:

• provision high-speed connections to hundreds of data centers, service providers, and internet exchanges in under 60 seconds
• expand its network with ease, with access to over 930 enabled global locations in 26 countries
• get private, secure, low-latency connections on our scalable network fabric, with available bandwidth of up to 100G
• create connections for almost any network setup including multicloud, hybrid cloud, edge, and AI use cases
• manage its entire connection portfolio on the Megaport Portal, a smart, simple management platform.

And as a result of switching to Megaport’s SDN, Zuellig Pharma:

• built a low-latency, collaborative, scalable, and reliable healthcare network
• migrated its full SAP landscape to an Azure-hosted environment and ran next-generation applications on AWS with Megaport’s SDN solutions
• reduced ETL extracts for analytics workloads by more than 150%
• cut latency for real-time analytics by more than 75%
• reduced cutover timings for its core SAP migration to Azure by 30%.

Read the Zuellig Pharma case study.

Adopting software-defined networking in healthcare IT

How to transition from legacy to SDN

To transition from legacy to software-defined architecture, you need to:

Assess existing network architecture

• What legacy hardware do you need to account for with this transition?
• What will still be in use, and what will be decommissioned?
• How is your current network distributed, and where are all of your endpoints located?
• How much of your operations currently take place on-premises versus in the cloud – and how many clouds do you use?

Identify scalability and security needs

• What’s your company’s five-year plan? Are there any geographical expansions, tech integrations, or data migrations that will change your network needs?
• Consider the specific security conditions you need for your network. What do you need to put in place to remain HIPAA-compliant, for example?

Partner with a trusted SDN provider

The right provider (like Megaport) will help you with your SDN adoption process, demo different use cases, and even help you build solutions tailored to your specific needs and future plans.

Addressing stakeholder concerns about SDN adoption

When on your virtualization journey, you might come up against concerns about deployment and maintenance costs, and the unknowns of security.

With the right SDN provider, the average customer will save a huge amount of money over time thanks to:

• greatly reduced or eliminated hardware deployment and upgrade costs
• scalable, on-demand bandwidth and pay-as-you-go billing as opposed to overprovisioning for the highest-bandwidth scenario
• API and security integration to reduce the cost of add-on services
• lower long-term costs thanks to the flexibility to expand and change over time.

And while migrating your workloads to SDN creates uncertainty around the vulnerability of confidential data, SDN in fact lowers security risks by enabling:

• microsegmentation
• automated threat detection and response
• centralized policy management
• encrypted data flows
• dynamic access control.

These aren’t reasons to become complacent, though. Reinforce these benefits by fostering a cybersecurity culture across your organization.

Conclusion

Whether it’s enhancing telemedicine, integrating IoT and AI, or maintaining compliance, the healthcare industry is modernizing in ways that traditional networks just can’t match anymore. But with the right approach and a solid understanding of your network requirements, you can maximize ROI on your SDN adoption and make your business more efficient than it’s ever been.

Ready to future-proof your network? Let’s make it happen.