Reference story - Orbis medical and healthcare center
A hospital where the patient feels ‘at home’, and repercussions on IT
A hospital must be a place where the patient feels at home and where it is a pleasure to work. It was with this aim that, in 1996, ORBIS laid out the first plans for a new organization housed in a new building and based on brand new principles; “The 21st century hospital”. It also had repercussions on the ICT at ORBIS: ICT had to be integrated into the care processes so that it would form the engine for the company processes, just like any other utility such as electricity. IT is becoming something that goes without saying.
Jos Demandt, Head of the ICT department at Orbis Medisch and Zorgconcern, was able to clearly visualize what was required. “We wanted to move forward towards a dynamic environment where you continue to provide the right IT in spite of changes and complexity. It should be more like a utility than a system. This meant that we had to use a modular form of construction. In the same way that separate LEGO bricks can be assembled to form complex objects, our applications and systems also had to fit into the larger whole. Adding or removing a brick may not have consequences for the presentation of the whole.”
ORBIS has 12 locations spread across Limburg, and provides continuous care ‘from GP to home-care’. It employs a total of 5500 people and the new hospital contains 450 beds. So which developments in the care industry make a dynamic environment so essential?
- Raising efficiency: there are tight protocols for each process and no time can be lost because IT support is insufficient. Managers must be able to act fast.
- Securing patient details etc. The EPF must be accessible at all times by the right people in the right places.
- Wide diversity in jobs and roles which is reflected in the breadth of applications.
- Overview and control are becoming increasingly vital so as to provide staff with what they need.
The dynamic IT environment at ORBIS
Orbis’ intention was to have one system that would support all processes within the company. SAP’s ERP software formed the basis of the ‘hospital information system’, extended to include the addition of the EPF and the nursing file. The system communicates with other specific medical systems such as the laboratory system. In the area of workspace technology, ORBIS chose Terminal Servers and Citrix in combination with RES PowerFuse and RES Wisdom. Applications are further virtualized using VMware ThinApp. In Jos Demandt’s view, the virtualization of applications is also an expression of the dynamic IT environment. He explains why: “When you install an application on a PC, it takes root, so to speak, in the Operating System. If you need to adapt or replace an application, this can affect other applications, and that is exactly what we don’t want to happen. Now, however, the application operates more in what can be described as its own ‘soap bubble’ meaning that it becomes an autonomous building block. So, whereas it used to cost us perhaps six months to move over to a new version of, for example, the SAP front-end, it is now possible to implement this ‘on the fly’.
RES PowerFuse in the dynamic IT environment
Orbis deploys RES PowerFuse in order to give everyone their own personal work environment. Jos tells us, “Almost nobody here has a fixed workspace as we apply the principle of free seating. There are only standard work areas with standard PCs and telephones on standard furniture. It is only when you use a smart card, which you insert into the keyboard, that your personal workspace is sent to you. When the smart card is inserted, RES PowerFuse detects which person with which particular role is logging in on PC A and ensures that that appropriate applications and settings are available. In principle, the session and the PC run continuously; when the smart card is removed and inserted into PC B, the session simply continues. Jos explains, “Without a management tool like RES PowerFuse this would be almost impossible.
This was the only way we are able to give people the impression that applications follow them, wherever they log on. ”The bedside terminals are also used by patient and doctor/ nurse as a work station’. The doctor uses the smart card to log onto the terminal and is able to bring the patent data up to date in the EPF. The patient can log onto the same terminal to order meals, to internet or control the television. Once RES PowerFuse has identified the user it immediately allocates the proper applications and settings together with the correct security rules.
The RES PowerFuse Workspace Extender™ is used extensively by ORBIS to make local applications available within a Citrix XenApp session. Demandt: “Naturally, many of our specialists use very specific programs which occasionally require special resources that cannot run on a Terminal Server. At the pathology policlinic, for instance, they use a speech recognition program that can only operate locally. However, RES PowerFuse enables us to ensure that the doctor has one start screen on which the local application is combined with everything required from the data center.”
“I can compare RES PowerFuse with the flight deck of an aircraft,” continues Jos. The flight deck is the control centre from where the enormously complex guidance of a modern airplane is coordinated. RES PowerFuse provides us with the same ability.
RES Wisdom in the dynamic IT environment
From the very beginning, RES Wisdom has been deployed to adapt the environment at the back-end. “RES Wisdom plays a massive role in the continuity of our environment,” says Demandt. The fact that RES Wisdom enables you to smoothly deploy additional servers or, when combined with ThinApp, add new applications without endangering stability, is what really makes the environment so dynamic.”
RES Wisdom means that manual installations or scripts are no longer needed. Jos is convinced that this also contributes to dynamism. “It gives managers an overview and control over the various building blocks of our IT infrastructure. Using RES Wisdom, we have automated our automation.”
RES PowerFuse can be compared to an aircraft flight deck: it tells our managers what is going on and allows them to control our IT environment from a single place.
Jos Demandt, Head of ICT department, Netherlands