I maintain every day standing conferences with varied teams inside our expertise staff, and the questions nearly at all times drifts to: “What’s right now’s problem?” Generally that problem is likely to be, “We will’t print at one in all our ambulatory care services,” or “In the present day, we will’t ship diagnostic photos 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 get rid of the problems that crop up on these conferences and work to reduce or get rid of these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we would have liked to sort out the foundation of the issue. This, together with our want to interchange our digital well being document and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s determination to utterly overhaul our IT infrastructure in help of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to carry innovation to our sufferers. As an educational well being system, we function one in all 71 Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated most cancers facilities within the nation, Oklahoma’s solely Stage I trauma heart 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 every day complications, our IT overhaul will essentially remodel how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and medical methods we use to help our healthcare professionals and sufferers.
An entire revamp of a well being system’s IT infrastructure is a frightening job. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like making an attempt to work on the engine of a shifting prepare. The method has taken dedication and cautious planning, the work of my staff 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 consists of 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 information 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 observe supplier and educator made me notice the difficulties that come up when coping with healthcare IT methods. Due to a pal 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 Faculty of Drugs college observe 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 intently with our IT management staff on the Epic migration challenge. This initiative moved OU Well being to a brand new EHR system. To realize this, we deployed a greenfield answer, which concerned establishing new networks, methods, knowledge facilities and functions, whereas holding our legacy methods working.
Sadly, the environment was not in the perfect form. It featured outdated tools, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched tools, and extra, which prompted quite a few challenges. Our community was additionally very gradual, 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 prompted frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital employees. They needed to name us at any time when one thing went fallacious, and we had no solution to proactively monitor and restore our methods. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know the way to restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was vital to make sure that our healthcare professionals might 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 most recent answer, nor will we have a look at the most affordable. We don’t minimize prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As an alternative, we have a look at probably the most superior tried and true methods. We take this strategy when choosing lab tools, imaging and diagnostic methods, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, we have now a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inner challenge 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. Nevertheless, my job requires me to be goal, so I attend occasions like Gartner Summits and the annual HIMSS World Well being Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a wonderful grasp of the expertise panorama, and I’ve but to discover a companion 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 staff 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 an alternative we got the inexperienced mild to construct all the things we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system atmosphere that will put OU Well being on the map as a top-tier medical heart.
We constructed our new community on Cisco expertise. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Utility Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking answer, to assist phase our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Large Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory methods. Then we have now a number of routers to deal with our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or phase fails, we divert visitors to an alternate path.
We use Cisco ACI to route visitors to particular locations inside our community. An incredible instance is lab outcomes. Our lab tools 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 information methods.
Affected person well being consists of their healthcare knowledge, 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 knowledge per HIPAA rules. 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 Providers 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 methods (working on historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them working till we’re in a position to exchange the methods with out disrupting care.
Migrating Our Knowledge Facilities to Guarantee IT Transparency
Our three new knowledge facilities carry the load of our new community. Two of our knowledge facilities are lively/lively and mirror one another, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility working at 50% capability. Our third knowledge heart is for catastrophe restoration (DR) and has redundant hyperlinks to all our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory methods. Ought to the unthinkable occur and our main knowledge facilities fail, the third knowledge heart will guarantee we stay operational.
Certainly one of our largest challenges and alternatives was migrating our methods and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable knowledge facilities. As an alternative of constructing our personal on-prem knowledge facilities, we determined to companion with a top-tier co-location facility who might host our knowledge 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 scale 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 knowledge heart off-prem was one in all 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 main community in March 2023, however this was the ultimate take a look at. We’re already reaping the rewards of our new Cisco infrastructure. We’re now not fielding complaints about gradual Wi-Fi speeds, connection failures, community phase 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 increase, innovate and construct on our new platform.
Cisco Is Serving to OU Well being Elevate Our Group
Earlier than lengthy, my IT staff will be capable of leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Well being’s enterprise imaginative and prescient. We will 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 will increase our platform as wanted so as to add highly effective new functions like knowledge analytics and inhabitants well being administration (PHM) instruments to mixture affected person data throughout a number of methods and applied sciences. Now that we have now rolled out Epic, we have now a strong basis to assist us push the envelope of high quality affected person care and cutting-edge analysis.
The very best minds gravitate to organizations that permit them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as an alternative of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a beneficial retention and recruitment software. Clinicians and researchers additionally wish to work in high-tech environments. They would favor user-friendly methods over scuffling with digital types, drowning in countless emails, or ready hours for medical photos, take a look at outcomes, and trial and affected person knowledge. Once they have probably the most environment friendly instruments and IT works flawlessly, they’ll give attention to their sufferers and analysis.
OU Well being is on a mission to raise and remodel 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 wish to make a distinction in Oklahoma and past by bringing the perfect medical care to the populations we serve.
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