East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT)

Formed in 2018 through the merger of Ipswich Hospital and Colchester Hospital Trusts, ESNEFT operates a vast and complex estate that includes:

• Two major hospitals: Colchester Hospital and Ipswich Hospital
• 11 community sites providing outpatient care, diagnostics, and specialist services
• Over 10,000 staff working across clinical, administrative and operational roles
• A growing network of services increasingly reliant on mobile devices, digital records, and real-time communications

As a modern NHS Trust, ESNEFT is committed to improving patient experience, enabling frontline staff, and ensuring operational efficiency. To achieve this, they require a high-performing, resilient WiFi network capable of supporting clinical systems, medical IoT devices, automated workflows, and mobile working across their entire estate.

However, with buildings of varying ages, expansions, refurbishments, and changing technology requirements, ESNEFT needs a wireless refresh, as they have experienced WiFi performance issues, coverage gaps, and inconsistent design practices across sites.

This brought them to Performance Networks to carry out a Trust-wide WiFi review, refresh, and redesign.

Why They Came To Performance Networks

ESNEFT required a thorough refresh of its wireless network across its hospital and community estates.

• Multiple sites (community centres, hospital campuses) are experiencing inconsistent WiFi coverage, poor placement of access points (APs) and mounting issues.
• The need for 100% wireless coverage in critical clinical and operational areas to support frontline staff, mobile working, devices, and real-time connectivity.
• Complex estate: 11 community sites + major hospital sites (e.g., Colchester / Ipswich) requiring bespoke design, health-checks and fault-finding to bring consistency and performance.
• The desire to move beyond “add more APs” and instead apply a survey-based, data-driven design with full lifecycle consultancy and remediation.

The Work Carried Out

Performance Networks performed a structured approach:

1. Survey & Baseline Assessment

Conducted full site surveys onsite across 11 community sites and the main hospital sites to map existing WiFi infrastructure.

Used Ekahau to generate WiFi heatmaps, signal-strength distributions, coverage gaps and interference zones.

On-site fault-finding and health checks: identifying incorrectly mounted APs, poorly placed hardware, and redundant or sub-optimally configured access points.

2. Design & Recommendation

Produced detailed design proposals for each location: specifying the correct type and number of APs, optimal mounting positions, channel planning, power and backhaul requirements.

Recommended re-deployment or relocation of existing APs for better coverage and performance rather than simply scaling up AP count.

Proposed standardised design across all sites to support reliable roaming, IoT/medical devices and future wireless requirements.

The Outcome

The WiFi designs developed from our initial surveys will deliver 100% coverage & high performing WiFi across all hospital and community sites, resolving legacy issues such as incorrectly placed or mounted access points, thereby reducing interference and improving overall reliability. Using detailed Ekahau heatmaps and data-driven insights, we provided ESNEFT’s network team with clear visual evidence of performance gains, helping them make confident, informed decisions. By standardising the wireless architecture across multiple locations, we’ve simplified ongoing support, reduced network complexity, and significantly improved operational efficiency. This refreshed design now positions ESNEFT with a robust wireless backbone ready to support future demands, from medical IoT and mobile clinical teams to high-density hospital environments.

Why This Matters

In a healthcare environment, connectivity failures or weak wireless can hinder mobile working, clinical device use, real-time patient data access and operational flexibility. By choosing Performance Networks for their surveys and designs, ESNEFT have ensured its wireless infrastructure will no longer be a barrier but a strategic enabler. This demonstrates how our targeted survey-based design, network health-checking and WiFi consultancy deliver meaningful improvements, not just “more APs”.