HCE helps Lakeridge Health to embark on its digital transformation journey with Integrated Voice Communications.
Lakeridge Health
Lakeridge Health is Durham Region’s acute health care provider. Its dedicated team of more than 5,400 employees, 760 physicians, and 1,500 volunteers provide care to 650,000 people across the region. With five hospitals, four emergency departments, a residential treatment centre, and more than a dozen community health care sites, Lakeridge Health delivers critical services through regional specialty centres like the R.S. McLaughlin Durham Regional Cancer Centre, Pinewood Centre for addictions and mental health, and The Shoulder Centre. The organization also provides regional eye care, mental health, and chronic kidney disease services to Durham Region and beyond.
The Challenge
With people’s health in their hands, Lakeridge Health needed a modern, integrated communications system they could trust. As the organization grew, managing multiple phone systems and networks became costly and created dangerous delays in critical communications. Lakeridge Health knew they needed to upgrade to a single, reliable voice network to support their expanding operations and maintain high standards of care.
The Solution
To unite all sites under one reliable voice network, HCE deployed a Cisco softswitch to bridge legacy public switched telephone networks (PSTN) with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls. The softswitch provides carrier-grade call control, routing, and connectivity to traditional phone networks.
Lakeridge Health chose to obtain this as a managed service, allowing HCE to own, operate, and support the Cisco softswitch. This frees Lakeridge Health to focus on delivering exceptional health care while relying on HCE’s expertise for modern voice communications.
Migration
HCE’s technical expertise and dedicated support were critical to the project’s success. HCE delivered a complex migration quickly and smoothly, with minimal disruption to daily operations.
Technical Overview
- Replaced costly Primary Rate Interface (PRI) trunks with flexible Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks
- Migrated from legacy Nortel PBX infrastructure to modern Call Manager voice infrastructure
- Fully resilient network with fail-over capabilities
- Over 1,000 phone numbers ported into one unified system
- 60 flexible, high-availability trunk groups
Outcomes
Lakeridge Health has simplified its telephony operations by adopting a fully managed voice solution from HCE. The unified softswitch has replaced fragmented legacy systems with reliable, resilient communications across all sites. The new service model means lower costs, modern capabilities, and no need for ongoing capital investment in telephony infrastructure.
Benefits
Since the deployment in March 2020, Lakeridge Health has benefited from significant cost savings and increased reliability. The Cisco softswitch reduces costs for local and long-distance calls, frees up valuable real estate by eliminating bulky legacy hardware, and lowers overhead for power and cooling.
HCE’s managed solution also provides advanced reporting and analytics, giving Lakeridge Health better visibility into usage and costs than ever before. The result is a resilient, future-proof communications network that helps Lakeridge Health focus on what matters most — providing outstanding care to the community.
Lakeridge Health Infrastructure leaders, Brian Harrison and Aaron Lam, are thrilled with HCE. Thanks to HCE Telecom, from design to deployment, Lakeridge Health has been able to improve operational and cost efficiency. Lakeridge Health has been able to eliminate separate telephony systems and create a common underlying telephony infrastructure.
About HCE
Servicing the Greater Hamilton Area, HCE is a different kind of telecommunications company. HCE prides itself on being a nimble organisation that moves quickly in response to client needs. Thanks to a team of experienced and dedicated professionals, HCE is able to swiftly deliver on particularly complex demands, providing innovative solutions to highly intricate network challenges. It draws on deep network experience to provide exceptional service to its local community, to help create a healthy, safe and vibrant society. Since 2015, HCE has deployed a 10-gigabit fibre network that serves city facilities, businesses, universities and hospitals. Playing to its strengths, HCE has developed a solid understanding of the needs of the Municipal, University, School, and Hospital (MUSH) sectors. It counts among its customers: Hamilton Wentworth District School Board, City of Hamilton, The Region of Halton and the Hamilton Police Service, The Weather Network and the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario.
case studies
