I maintain every day standing conferences with numerous teams inside our know-how group, and the questions nearly at all times drifts to: “What’s as we speak’s problem?” Typically that problem could be, “We are able to’t print at considered one of our ambulatory care amenities,” or “As we speak, 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 attenuate or get rid of these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we would have liked to deal with the basis of the issue. This, together with our need to interchange our digital well being file and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s resolution to fully overhaul our IT infrastructure in assist of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to convey innovation to our sufferers. As an instructional well being system, we function considered one of 71 Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated most cancers facilities within the nation, Oklahoma’s solely Degree I trauma heart and the state’s highest degree NICU, providing high-quality affected person care and operating medical trials resulting in thrilling new therapies. Greater than fixing our every day complications, our IT overhaul will essentially rework how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and medical methods we use to assist 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 group and the assist of know-how 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 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 follow 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 very 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 school follow and OU Drugs, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Belief) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first absolutely built-in tutorial well being system. The merger aligned the OU Well being medical enterprise with nationwide finest practices throughout the healthcare business and enabled the hospitals and clinics to develop into one unified and cohesive group.
Since my arrival at OU Well being in March of 2022, I’ve labored carefully with our IT management group on the Epic migration venture. 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, methods, information facilities and functions, whereas protecting our legacy methods operating.
Sadly, our surroundings was not in the very best form. It featured outdated gear, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched gear, and extra, which prompted 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 places.
This hindered workflows and prompted frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital workers. They needed to name us at any time when one thing went flawed, and we had no method to proactively monitor and restore our methods. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know methods to restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was vital to make sure that our healthcare professionals might concentrate on caring for his or her sufferers and never fear about technical points.
We Wished Redundancy, Resilience, and Efficiency—That Meant Cisco
Healthcare organizations are considerably conservative when procuring IT. We don’t search for the most recent resolution, nor can we have a look at the most affordable. We don’t reduce prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As a substitute, we have a look at essentially the most superior tried and true methods. We take this strategy when choosing lab gear, imaging and diagnostic methods, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, we now have a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inside venture 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 World Well being Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a wonderful grasp of the know-how 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 assist a never-down situation.
After we created the specs for our new setting, 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 assist a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new setting, 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 group labored with Cisco’s community architects, exterior companions, and our inside lead architects. We put collectively a funding request and introduced 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 setting that may put OU Well being on the map as a top-tier medical heart.
We constructed our new community on Cisco know-how. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Utility Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, 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 now have a number of routers to deal with our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or phase fails, we divert site visitors to an alternate path.
We use Cisco ACI to route site visitors to particular locations inside our community. An ideal 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 methods.
Affected person well being contains their healthcare information, and we prioritize the safety round our sufferers’ protected well being info (PHI). We used ACI to create a firewalled zone for PHI and different delicate information per HIPAA rules. Customers can solely entry that setting in the event that they’re performing a transaction requiring that info.
We additionally use Cisco UCS servers for scalable effectivity and agility, Cisco Identification 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 (operating on historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them operating 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 information facilities carry the load of our new community. Two of our information facilities are lively/lively and mirror one another, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility operating at 50% capability. Our third information 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 information facilities fail, the third information heart will guarantee we stay operational.
Considered one of our greatest challenges and alternatives was migrating our methods and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable information facilities. As a substitute of constructing our personal on-prem information facilities, we determined to companion with a top-tier co-location facility who might 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 ability, cooling, HVAC, and constructing supplies to cut back their carbon footprint. We profit from strong redundancy and backup options, and the energy-efficient know-how helps decrease our working bills whereas defending the setting. Transferring our information heart off-prem was considered one of our greatest enterprise and tech choices.
On June 3, 2023, OU Well being went dwell 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 sluggish Wi-Fi speeds, connection failures, community phase outages and VPN points. OU Well being can entry what they want shortly, getting sufferers what they want sooner. I stay up for sitting down with our care groups to seek out methods to develop, innovate and construct on our new platform.
Cisco Is Serving to OU Well being Elevate Our Group
Earlier than lengthy, my IT group will be capable of leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Well being’s enterprise imaginative and prescient. We are able to combine new departments, places, and amenities into our community sooner 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 develop 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 info throughout a number of methods and applied sciences. Now that we now have rolled out Epic, we now have a stable 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 allow them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as an alternative of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a useful retention and recruitment instrument. Clinicians and researchers additionally need to work in high-tech environments. They would like user-friendly methods over combating digital types, drowning in countless emails, or ready hours for medical photos, take a look at outcomes, and trial and affected person information. After they have essentially the most environment friendly instruments and IT works flawlessly, they’ll concentrate on their sufferers and analysis.
OU Well being is on a mission to raise and rework our group right into a top-tier tutorial well being system. Our management sees know-how 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 the very best medical care to the populations we serve.
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