I maintain each day standing conferences with varied teams inside our expertise crew, and the questions nearly all the time drifts to: “What’s in the present day’s problem?” Typically that problem may be, “We are able to’t print at certainly one of our ambulatory care services,” or “At present, we are able to’t ship diagnostic photographs to our distant Radiologists.” The assembly helps us to focus our consideration, and because the CTO of OU Well being in Oklahoma Metropolis, my job is to remove the problems that crop up on these conferences and work to reduce or remove these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we wanted to deal with the basis of the issue. This, together with our want to switch our digital well being report and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s choice to utterly overhaul our IT infrastructure in help of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to convey innovation to our sufferers. As an instructional well being system, we function certainly one of 71 Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated most cancers facilities within the nation, Oklahoma’s solely Stage I trauma middle and the state’s highest degree NICU, providing high-quality affected person care and working medical trials resulting in thrilling new therapies. Greater than fixing our each day complications, our IT overhaul will essentially rework how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and medical programs we use to help our healthcare professionals and sufferers.
An entire revamp of a well being system’s IT infrastructure is a frightening activity. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like making an attempt to work on the engine of a transferring prepare. The method has taken dedication and cautious planning, the work of my crew and the help of expertise companions like Cisco to place collectively and roll out an answer throughout OU Well being’s websites.
A Contemporary Begin, a Greenfield Community, and Some Limitations
I’ve had the privilege of working in healthcare IT for over 13 years. My earlier expertise contains serving because the VP of Expertise Structure at Cablevision for seven years and two years at Discovery because the SVP of Enterprise Structure, the place I gained a wealth of data in telecommunications and leisure. Following a six-month sabbatical, I had the chance to return to my earlier function, however I made a decision to make use of my experience to help others in a way more impactful approach. Watching my spouse struggling for years along with her group’s IT as a household follow supplier and educator made me understand the difficulties that come up when coping with healthcare IT programs. Due to a buddy I had labored with earlier in my profession, I joined a healthcare consulting firm launching my profession in healthcare IT to assist physicians and sufferers obtain the absolute best outcomes in medical care.
OU Well being formally launched in July 2021, following a historic merger that mixed the College of Oklahoma School of Drugs school follow and OU Drugs, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Belief) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first absolutely built-in educational well being system. The merger aligned the OU Well being medical enterprise with nationwide finest practices throughout the healthcare trade and enabled the hospitals and clinics to grow to be one unified and cohesive group.
Since my arrival at OU Well being in March of 2022, I’ve labored carefully with our IT management crew on the Epic migration mission. This initiative moved OU Well being to a brand new EHR system. To realize this, we deployed a greenfield resolution, which concerned organising new networks, programs, information facilities and purposes, whereas maintaining our legacy programs working.
Sadly, the environment was not in one of the best form. It featured outdated gear, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched gear, and extra, which triggered quite a few challenges. Our community was additionally very sluggish, which meant that it took 15 to half-hour for a radiologist to obtain X-rays and CAT scans at our distant areas.
This hindered workflows and triggered frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital workers. They needed to name us at any time when one thing went mistaken, and we had no solution to proactively monitor and restore our programs. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was vital to make sure that our healthcare professionals may give attention to caring for his or her sufferers and never fear about technical points.
We Needed Redundancy, Resilience, and Efficiency—That Meant Cisco
Healthcare organizations are considerably conservative when procuring IT. We don’t search for the latest resolution, nor can we take a look at the most cost effective. We don’t lower prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As a substitute, we take a look at essentially the most superior tried and true programs. We take this method when deciding on lab gear, imaging and diagnostic programs, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, now we have a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inner mission supervisor additionally brings a long time of expertise in managing large-scale Cisco deployments. Everyone knows that Cisco can ship extremely performant, redundant and resilient infrastructure. Nonetheless, my job requires me to be goal, so I attend occasions like Gartner Summits and the annual HIMSS International Well being Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a superb grasp of the expertise panorama, and I’ve but to discover a associate that may ship on its guarantees like Cisco.
Hospitals are 24/7 establishments, and hospital infrastructure should absolutely help a never-down situation.
Once we created the specs for our new atmosphere, we checked out three issues: excessive redundancy, excessive resilience, and excessive efficiency. OU Well being, like most healthcare organizations, runs 24 hours a day, seven days per week, and our infrastructure should absolutely help a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new atmosphere, we didn’t ask, “Why Cisco?” The actual query was, “Why not Cisco?”
Redefining Our Community with Software program-Outlined Networking
When it got here time to pitch our new infrastructure, the crew labored with Cisco’s community architects, exterior companions, and our inner lead architects. We put collectively a funding request and offered it to our board. We anticipated our executives to approve lower than what our budgeted request was, however as a substitute we got the inexperienced mild to construct all the things we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system atmosphere that might put OU Well being on the map as a top-tier medical middle.
We constructed our new community on Cisco expertise. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Utility Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, to assist section our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Huge Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory programs. Then now we have a number of routers to deal with our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or section fails, we divert visitors to an alternate path.
We use Cisco ACI to route visitors to particular locations inside our community. An excellent instance is lab outcomes. Our lab gear doesn’t talk with the skin world, however our technicians should ship outcomes to our EMR. So, we’ve segmented the community to switch outcomes solely to particular servers that then add them to our data programs.
Affected person well being contains their healthcare information, and we prioritize the safety round our sufferers’ protected well being data (PHI). We used ACI to create a firewalled zone for PHI and different delicate information per HIPAA laws. Customers can solely entry that atmosphere in the event that they’re performing a transaction requiring that data.
We additionally use Cisco UCS servers for scalable effectivity and agility, Cisco Id Companies Engine (ISE) for endpoint administration, and we go end-to-end on Cisco wi-fi options, consisting of Cisco Catalyst 9130AX and 9166 entry factors and 9800-80 controllers. As well as, we adopted Cisco VDI to combine a few of our legacy programs (working on historical machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them working till we’re capable of change the programs with out disrupting care.
Migrating Our Information Facilities to Guarantee IT Transparency
Our three new information facilities carry the load of our new community. Two of our information facilities are energetic/energetic and mirror one another, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility working at 50% capability. Our third information middle is for catastrophe restoration (DR) and has redundant hyperlinks to all our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory programs. Ought to the unthinkable occur and our major information facilities fail, the third information middle will guarantee we stay operational.
Certainly one of our largest challenges and alternatives was migrating our programs and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable information facilities. As a substitute of constructing our personal on-prem information facilities, we determined to associate with a top-tier co-location facility who may host our information facilities and decrease our footprint dramatically. We partnered with TierPoint, and had been one of many first shoppers at their new facility constructed with effectivity in thoughts. They architected the facility, cooling, HVAC, and constructing supplies to cut back their carbon footprint. We profit from sturdy redundancy and backup options, and the energy-efficient expertise helps decrease our working bills whereas defending the atmosphere. Shifting our information middle off-prem was certainly one of our greatest enterprise and tech choices.
On June 3, 2023, OU Well being went reside with Epic and our new infrastructure. We had already moved to our new major community in March 2023, however this was the ultimate check. We’re already reaping the rewards of our new Cisco infrastructure. We’re now not fielding complaints about sluggish Wi-Fi speeds, connection failures, community section outages and VPN points. OU Well being can entry what they want rapidly, getting sufferers what they want quicker. I look ahead to sitting down with our care groups to search out methods to broaden, innovate and construct on our new platform.
Cisco Is Serving to OU Well being Elevate Our Group
Earlier than lengthy, my IT crew will have the ability to leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Well being’s enterprise imaginative and prescient. We are able to combine new departments, areas, and services into our community quicker as a result of we anticipated the necessity to construct extra WAN connections and have a complete map of each present and future state. Prior to now, each community addition was a one-off occasion. However now, we are able to broaden our platform as wanted so as to add highly effective new purposes like information analytics and inhabitants well being administration (PHM) instruments to mixture affected person data throughout a number of programs and applied sciences. Now that now we have rolled out Epic, now we have a strong basis to assist us push the envelope of high quality affected person care and cutting-edge analysis.
The most effective minds gravitate to organizations that permit them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as a substitute of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a helpful retention and recruitment instrument. Clinicians and researchers additionally need to work in high-tech environments. They would like user-friendly programs over scuffling with digital types, drowning in infinite emails, or ready hours for medical photographs, check outcomes, and trial and affected person information. Once they have essentially the most environment friendly instruments and IT works flawlessly, they will give attention to their sufferers and analysis.
OU Well being is on a mission to raise and rework our group right into a top-tier educational well being system. Our management sees expertise as key to delivering on our imaginative and prescient and enterprise technique. We’re increasing our providers and analysis initiatives and can proceed to innovate in diabetes and most cancers care, pediatrics, and geriatrics. We need to make a distinction in Oklahoma and past by bringing one of the best medical care to the populations we serve.
Share:
