Healthcare AV System Design at the Mayo Clinic IERB
The demands placed on a modern medical facility extend far beyond patient rooms and surgical theaters. For leading institutions to push the boundaries of biomedical science, they need educational and research spaces that foster seamless collaboration between physicians, trainees, and global experts. Designing the technical infrastructure for these environments requires a specialized approach that prioritizes reliability, flexibility, and extreme scale.
The Integrated Education and Research Building (IERB) represents the Mayo Clinic’s largest campus expansion to date. To ensure this monumental 150,000-square-foot facility met its visionary goals, the Mayo Clinic partnered with FORTÉ (formerly known as AVI Systems), our regional team in the USA. In episode three of the Project Profiles webinar series, Principal Design Engineer Mike Wallin (CTS-D) and UC Deployment Engineer Shawn Wallin break down the complex technical choices that brought this campus to life.
Watch the full presentation below to explore the network topology behind this cutting-edge healthcare facility.
Engineering Flexible Medical Training Facilities
The IERB was built to house five distinct schools under the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. With over 45,000 square feet dedicated solely to education, the FORTÉ design team was challenged to build spaces that could adapt instantly to various teaching methods.
A defining feature of this healthcare AV system design is the 60-person divide-and-combine training room. This space is engineered for maximum versatility:
It functions as a single, large-group training environment.
It can be split into multiple smaller breakout pods for focused study.
It supports overflow viewing from the main event space.
It operates seamlessly in both physical and hybrid modes using a 12-camera Microsoft Teams meeting setup with automated camera tracking.
Achieving this level of on-the-fly flexibility requires moving away from rigid matrix switchers. By implementing an AV-over-IP topology, the FORTÉ team ensured that the room’s layout could be dynamically changed via floor boxes and wall plates without extensive hardware reconfiguration.
A Robust AV-over-IP Network Backbone
Supporting the massive data load generated by high-definition medical imaging, wet lab collaborations, and campus-wide broadcasts requires an unyielding IT infrastructure. For the IERB project, the FORTÉ team chose to run the entire AV system on NETGEAR switching.
The network topology utilizes a star configuration, with a central M4350-32F8V core switch distributing data to multiple M4350-48G4XF edge switches located throughout the facility. This specific hardware was selected for its robust performance and ease of deployment. Because these switches come pre-configured with optimized profiles for the specific audio and video protocols used in the building, the integration team significantly reduced their programming time during the installation and deployment phase.
This meticulous planning and management of the network backbone ensures that the IERB can reliably support everything from complex genomic analysis presentations to virtual reality simulations, empowering the next generation of medical professionals.
If your healthcare organization is planning a major campus expansion and requires a highly reliable, scalable technology infrastructure, our global experts are ready to assist. Please reach out to our team of integration specialists to discuss your specific requirements.
