When most people think about networking, they think about uptime, latency, and maybe the occasional late-night maintenance window.
When networking teams think about mission-critical infrastructure, it often means protecting revenue.
But at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, “mission-critical” is viewed through a different lens. Their network supports run-of-the-mill business operations, but it also supports patient care, life-saving research, and the global fight against pediatric catastrophic disease.
We sat down with Remington Loose and Josh Morris to explore what it really means to design and run a mission-critical network in an environment where the stakes are profoundly human.
A Mission That Reframes the Work
St. Jude’s mission is simple and powerful:
Advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment.
Families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing, or food. That mission shapes every operational decision across the organization, including IT.
For their network engineers, that creates a different kind of motivation.
Instead of optimizing for profit or productivity metrics alone, the work directly supports clinicians, researchers, and ultimately children fighting life-threatening diseases.
As Remington put it, working at St. Jude means you never lose sight of why the work matters. Patients, families, and staff share the same campus, reinforcing the human impact behind every system and service.
A Campus Network Unlike Any Other
St. Jude operates as a large, highly interconnected campus environment rather than a sprawling WAN of hospitals.
But don’t let “single campus” fool you.
Within that footprint exists one of the most technically diverse access networks you’ll find anywhere:
- Clinical care environments
- Research laboratories
- Imaging facilities
- Education and global collaboration programs
- Hospitality services for families
Each domain brings radically different technical requirements and risk profiles.
Research Data at Massive Scale
Supporting research at St. Jude isn’t just an IT function; it’s a high-performance networking challenge at enormous scale.
Consider just one workflow:
- High-speed microscopes capture cellular imagery from multiple angles
- Systems identify cells of interest in real time
- Selected samples are sequenced genetically
- Resulting datasets are recombined for multi-omic analysis
The data volumes involved?
Multiple terabytes per dataset, sometimes more.
And the infrastructure supporting it includes:
- Custom-built scientific instruments
- Prototype research systems with no documentation
- High-performance workstations
- Specialized storage and sequencing platforms
In some cases, researchers build the instruments themselves, leaving IT to figure out connectivity, throughput, and security from scratch.
As Remington described it:
“We ask what ports it needs and the answer is, ‘We don’t know yet.’”
That’s networking on the bleeding edge of science.
When Downtime Has Scientific Consequences
In most enterprises, downtime means lost productivity or revenue.
In research environments, the impact can be far more severe.
Josh shared an example:
A research job had been running for seven days using rare patient samples. A network disruption caused the job to fail, forcing researchers to restart the entire process and obtain new samples.
That introduces:
- Financial cost
- Research delays
- Patient inconvenience
- Potentially lost scientific progress
It’s a powerful reminder that uptime in research networks isn’t just operational, it’s mission-critical.
Designing Wi-Fi for Patients
One of the most human moments in the episode came from an unexpected place: guest Wi-Fi.
Josh recounted helping a young patient connect a new Xbox game that wasn’t working due to firewall restrictions. After fixing the issue, he stayed and played for hours with the child.
That experience reshaped how he viewed guest networking.
St. Jude ultimately deployed fully open guest Wi-Fi (with appropriate segmentation and controls), recognizing that connectivity isn’t a luxury for patients and families.
It’s a lifeline to:
- Entertainment
- Education
- Social connection
- Emotional relief
Guest Wi-Fi became a critical service, not an afterthought.
The network name?
HopeNet.
Security Without Slowing the Mission
Healthcare and research environments introduce layered security requirements:
- HIPAA compliance
- Clinical system protection
- Research data governance
- Global data-sharing regulations
- PCI environments (retail, cafeteria, etc.)
St. Jude’s journey mirrors many enterprises, evolving through stages:
- Perimeter + distributive firewalls
- VRF segmentation and centralized firewalls
- NAC and dynamic access controls
- Toward zero trust and identity-driven policy
But the twist is scale and diversity.
Security controls must protect:
- Managed endpoints
- BYOD patient devices
- Research instruments
- Legacy clinical systems
- Global collaborators
All without breaking critical workflows.
Automation: From Helpful to Necessary
Campus growth is accelerating rapidly:
- ~30% network growth multiple times in recent years
- New buildings
- Expanding research demands
Headcount hasn’t scaled at the same rate.
Automation moved from “nice to have” to essential.
Current initiatives include:
- Configuration compliance via Ansible
- Infrastructure deployment with Terraform
- Automated software image management (SWIM)
One major win:
Switch upgrades that once took 3–4 months can now be completed in 3–4 weeks.
That’s operational transformation, not just efficiency.
AI, HPC, and the Infrastructure Behind Discovery
AI isn’t hype in research hospitals.
It’s being applied to:
- Medical imaging analysis
- Pediatric-specific model training
- Pattern detection in small datasets
Interestingly, the infrastructure built for AI, high-performance fabrics, massive throughput, and distributed compute, also solves long-standing research networking challenges.
Even without AI workloads, the architecture is valuable.
Quantum: Preparing for What’s Next
St. Jude is also exploring quantum computing partnerships, particularly around medicine discovery.
Quantum excels at solving molecular interaction problems, such as:
- Protein binding
- Drug design
- Molecular geometry optimization
For pediatric diseases with limited sample sizes, quantum simulation could accelerate discovery dramatically.
From a networking standpoint, that introduces entirely new questions:
- How do quantum systems interconnect?
- Can different qubit technologies communicate?
- What does a “quantum network” even look like?
It’s early, but preparation matters.
Technology in Service of Humanity
If there was one theme that stood out across the entire conversation, it was this:
Technology is most meaningful when it serves something bigger than itself.
At St. Jude:
- Networks enable research breakthroughs
- Security protects patient trust
- Automation scales life-saving operations
- Connectivity brings comfort to families
Mission-critical takes on a deeper meaning when the mission is human life.
Listen to the Full Episode
If you want to hear the full conversation, including deep dives into research networking, security evolution, automation strategy, and quantum exploration, check out the episode:
Watch the Full Episode
And if you’re looking for a way to support the mission, visit stjude.org to learn more or donate.
Because sometimes, the network really does help save lives.
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