Installation Guide

Many of the core systems for SIH use MEDITECH applications. From registration and patient

care systems to medical records and radiology services, MEDITECH provides comprehensive

and integrated electronic health records (EHR) that keep SIH running smoothly. The

integrated Cisco UCS environment improves performance of MEDITECH applications by

delivering information quickly and reliably across network and storage connections.

Results

The virtualized Cisco UCS environment promotes greater use of clinical applications,

improving patient services. With the VDI environment on Cisco UCS, nurses and doctors

can securely access patient records, lab results, and process workflows from any computer

or tablet with an Internet connection. This capability helps medical personnel work with the

most accurate and up-to-date information possible. Cisco UCS offers greater performance

that accelerates boot-up and log-in on VDI machines, eliminating wasted time that could be

better spent interacting with patients.

One of the biggest advantages of MEDITECH’s solutions is that data is tied to a patient,

not to a location. With records stored in a central data center, any hospital, clinic,

or physician’s office in the SIH system can quickly access records and MEDITECH

applications. This capability helps SIH deliver consistent, high-quality services and

eliminate miscommunications as patients progress through their treatments.

In addition to improved IT management and application performance, the Cisco Unified

Data Center environment also uses resources more effectively, reducing footprint,

cooling, and power costs. By migrating to Cisco UCS, SIH eliminated eight server racks

from the data center and transformed 20 percent of the floor space into offices. “We’re

performing better and running much more efficiently in a more compact data center. After

moving to Cisco UCS, we eliminated planned expansions in power and cooling, saving us

more than $200,000 in capital expenditures,” says Holland.

Standardizing on Cisco in the data center boosted IT staff productivity as well. IT staff

only needs to be trained on a single vendor’s solution, and SIH no longer needs to keep

a supply of extra parts supporting dozens of vendors. The streamlined infrastructure

not only eliminated the need for SIH to double its IT staff, but the ease of centralized

management also enables existing staff to spend less time dealing with infrastructure

and more time supporting new applications and services.

The virtual Cisco environment enhances business continuity, a critical criteria for hospital

applications. SIH takes numerous measures, including diesel generators and off-site backup

systems, to keep systems up and running at all times. “Many of these systems are critical

to patient care, so they can’t go down for any reason,” says Holland. “The virtualized Cisco

UCS environment enables us to deploy new virtual servers to replace any failed ones on the

fly, effectively eliminating downtime for our systems.”

Next Steps

With the data center in place, the next step for SIH is to establish a true disaster recovery

center using Cisco Unified Data Center solutions for even greater insurance against

failures. SIH also intends to grow its environment to support more applications, services,

and capacity. “It’s hard to predict the direction of future medical technologies, so we need

agile systems and applications that enable us to respond to changing demands. We have

confidence that solutions such as those from Cisco and MEDITECH will scale quickly and

easily to meet our needs,” says Holland.