Case Study: Sentara Healthcare achieves rapid telemedicine scale and hybrid multicloud agility with Equinix

How Sentara Healthcare Is Delivering Telemedicine

Sentara Healthcare and its health plan Optima Health, a large nonprofit integrated health system, needed to modernize legacy networks and IT to meet surging demand for telemedicine during COVID‑19. Facing a roughly 500% increase in home interconnectivity and dramatic spikes in portal and telehealth traffic, Sentara had to build a faster, more reliable digital backbone to keep hospitals and 300 care centers connected and maintain uninterrupted patient care.

Sentara moved 100% of operations to a hybrid multicloud built on Platform Equinix, deploying redundant VMware SD‑WAN, Equinix Fabric and partner solutions from Dell Technologies and Faction to consolidate EMRs, connect cloud services (AWS/Azure) and enable voice-enabled patient metrics. The upgrade cut latency from 20 ms to 4 ms, sped cloud connections from months to minutes, scaled providers on telehealth from 75 to 2,000 and patient visits from 90 to 1,400 in two weeks, eliminated hospital downtime risk and reduced infrastructure costs by up to 60%.

Sentara Healthcare

Matt Douglas

Chief Enterprise Architect