I maintain day by day standing conferences with varied teams inside our expertise workforce, and the questions nearly at all times drifts to: “What’s right this moment’s problem?” Typically that problem is likely to be, “We will’t print at one in every of our ambulatory care services,” or “At present, we will’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 eradicate the problems that crop up on these conferences and work to reduce or eradicate these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we would have liked to sort out the basis of the issue. This, together with our need to switch our digital well being file and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s choice to fully overhaul our IT infrastructure in help of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to convey innovation to our sufferers. As a tutorial well being system, we function one in every of 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 scientific trials resulting in thrilling new therapies. Greater than fixing our day by day complications, our IT overhaul will basically rework how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and scientific programs we use to help our healthcare professionals and sufferers.
An entire revamp of a well being system’s IT infrastructure is a frightening process. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like attempting to work on the engine of a shifting prepare. The method has taken dedication and cautious planning, the work of my workforce and the help of expertise companions like Cisco to place collectively and roll out an answer throughout OU Well being’s websites.
A Recent 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 Know-how 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 means. Watching my spouse struggling for years together 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 programs. Due to a good friend 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 observe and OU Drugs, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Belief) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first totally built-in educational well being system. The merger aligned the OU Well being scientific enterprise with nationwide finest practices throughout the healthcare business and enabled the hospitals and clinics to turn into one unified and cohesive group.
Since my arrival at OU Well being in March of 2022, I’ve labored intently with our IT management workforce on the Epic migration undertaking. This initiative moved OU Well being to a brand new EHR system. To attain this, we deployed a greenfield resolution, which concerned establishing new networks, programs, information facilities and functions, whereas maintaining our legacy programs working.
Sadly, our surroundings was not in the most effective form. It featured outdated gear, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched gear, and extra, which induced 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 induced frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital workers. They needed to name us every time one thing went fallacious, and we had no option to proactively monitor and restore our programs. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know find out how to restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was essential 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 have a look at the most cost effective. We don’t reduce 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 programs. We take this method when choosing lab gear, imaging and diagnostic programs, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, we’ve got a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inner undertaking supervisor additionally brings many years 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 International 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 totally help a never-down situation.
Once we created the specs for our new surroundings, 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 every week, and our infrastructure should totally help a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new surroundings, we didn’t ask, “Why Cisco?” The true query was, “Why not Cisco?”
Redefining Our Community with Software program-Outlined Networking
When it got here time to pitch our new infrastructure, the workforce 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 gentle to construct every part we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system surroundings that may 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 (Application Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, to assist section our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Extensive Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory programs. Then we’ve got a number of routers to deal with our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or section fails, we divert site visitors to an alternate path.
We use Cisco ACI to route site visitors to particular locations inside our community. An awesome 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 rules. Customers can solely entry that surroundings in the event that they’re performing a transaction requiring that data.
We additionally use Cisco UCS servers for scalable effectivity and agility, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) for endpoint administration, and we go end-to-end on Cisco wireless solutions, consisting of Cisco Catalyst 9130AX and 9166 access points 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 in a position to exchange the programs with out disrupting care.
Migrating Our Knowledge 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 heart 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 heart 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 an alternative of constructing our personal on-prem information facilities, we determined to companion 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 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 surroundings. Transferring our information heart off-prem was one in every of our greatest enterprise and tech selections.
On June 3, 2023, OU Well being went dwell with Epic and our new infrastructure. We had already moved to our new major 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 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 stay up for 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 workforce will be capable to 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. Previously, 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 information analytics and inhabitants well being administration (PHM) instruments to combination affected person data throughout a number of programs and applied sciences. Now that we’ve got rolled out Epic, we’ve got a strong basis to assist us push the envelope of high quality affected person care and cutting-edge analysis.
The perfect minds gravitate to organizations that allow them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as an alternative of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a invaluable retention and recruitment software. Clinicians and researchers additionally wish to work in high-tech environments. They would like user-friendly programs over combating digital kinds, drowning in infinite emails, or ready hours for medical photographs, take a look at outcomes, and trial and affected person information. 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 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 companies 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 most effective medical care to the populations we serve.
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