Representative deployment — an illustrative composite of mobile imaging deployments; numbers reflect typical field results, not a single named program.
Situation
A regional mobile mammography program running 6 coaches across employer sites, rural hospitals, and community events — roughly 35 patients per coach-day of 3D tomosynthesis screening. Each DBT study runs ~1–3 GB, so a full coach-day generates 50–80 GB of DICOM data. The data path home: hard drives driven back to the reading center each night (“sneakernet”), with occasional host-site guest Wi-Fi where a host would allow it (most wouldn’t — reasonably, since 60 GB of PHI on a guest VLAN is a hard ask).
Old-way cost
- Turnaround: reads happened 24–48 hours post-screening; callbacks landed on day 3+, and host-site HR teams noticed.
- Labor: ~1.5 hours/night per coach of drive-back-and-ingest work — roughly 180 hours/month across the fleet.
- Contract risk: two employer host sites cited slow result turnaround in renewal negotiations; each recurring host contract is a six-figure relationship.
- Rural stops: at single-carrier sites, even opportunistic uploads were impossible — one weak carrier, inside a metal coach, at the far corner of a lot.
Solution
- Peplink MAX HD2 per coach (dual cellular modems; program evaluated MAX Transit Pro as the lighter alternative) with roof-mounted MIMO antennas.
- Three carriers bonded via SpeedFusion, plus a flat-mount Starlink as a fourth bonded WAN for deep-rural stops — combined upstream typically 35–55 Mbps from a parking lot.
- All DICOM traffic inside the 256-bit AES SpeedFusion tunnel, coach to PACS ingest — zero dependence on host-site networks; host IT is never in the PHI path.
- Hot failover mid-transfer: a carrier fade during a 2 GB study shifts packets to the remaining paths without restarting the upload.
- Fleet managed centrally in InControl; per-stop usage reporting feeds the program’s carrier-mix decisions.
Results (first quarter)
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Study delivery to radiologist | 24–48 hrs (nightly sneakernet) | Same day — median 9 min from acquisition to PACS (2 GB @ ~40 Mbps bonded) |
| Callback initiation | Day 3+ | Day 1 |
| Nightly ingest labor | ~180 hrs/month fleet-wide | 0 (≈ $45,000/yr at loaded cost) |
| Rural-stop upload capability | None | Full, via cellular ×3 + Starlink |
| Host-site renewals citing turnaround | 2 at risk | Both renewed; turnaround now a selling point |
| Connectivity cost per coach | — | ~$4,500 one-time (owned) + ~$220/month (3 SIMs + Starlink share + SpeedFusion) |
The line the program manager uses: “The last study of the day hits the reading center before the coach leaves the lot. Turnaround went from our biggest renewal objection to the first slide in our sales deck.”