I maintain each day standing conferences with varied teams inside our expertise crew, and the questions virtually all the time drifts to: “What’s at the moment’s problem?” Generally that problem may be, “We are able to’t print at considered one of our ambulatory care services,” or “As we speak, we are able to’t ship diagnostic photos to our distant Radiologists.” The assembly helps us to focus our consideration, and because the CTO of OU Health in Oklahoma Metropolis, my job is to remove the problems that crop up on these conferences and work to attenuate or remove these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we would have liked to deal with the foundation of the issue. This, together with our need to interchange our digital well being file and income cycle system, contributed to OU Health’s determination to utterly overhaul our IT infrastructure in help of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Health strives to convey innovation to our sufferers. As a tutorial 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 middle and the state’s highest stage NICU, providing high-quality affected person care and operating medical trials resulting in thrilling new remedies. 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 daunting process. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like making an attempt to work on the engine of a transferring prepare. The course of 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 a resolution throughout OU Health’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 Technology 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 far more impactful means. Watching my spouse struggling for years together with her group’s IT as a household observe supplier and educator made me understand the difficulties that come up when coping with healthcare IT programs. Because of 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 Health 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 Health — Oklahoma’s first totally built-in tutorial well being system. The merger aligned the OU Health medical enterprise with nationwide greatest practices throughout the healthcare business and enabled the hospitals and clinics to turn out to be one unified and cohesive group.
Since my arrival at OU Health in March of 2022, I’ve labored carefully with our IT management crew on the Epic migration undertaking. This initiative moved OU Health to a new EHR system. To realize this, we deployed a greenfield resolution, which concerned organising new networks, programs, information facilities and functions, whereas preserving our legacy programs operating.
Sadly, our surroundings was not in one of the best form. It featured outdated gear, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched gear, and extra, which brought on quite a few challenges. Our community was additionally very gradual, which meant that it took 15 to 30 minutes for a radiologist to obtain X-rays and CAT scans at our distant areas.
This hindered workflows and brought on frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital employees. They needed to name us every time one thing went incorrect, and we had no strategy to proactively monitor and restore our programs. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know how one can restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was needed to make sure that our healthcare professionals might concentrate on 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 resolution, nor can we take a look at the most affordable. We don’t reduce prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As an alternative, 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 Health, we now have a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inside 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. Nonetheless, my job requires me to be goal, so I attend occasions like Gartner Summits and the annual HIMSS World Health Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a wonderful grasp of the expertise panorama, and I’ve but to search out a companion that may ship on its guarantees like Cisco.
Hospitals are 24/7 establishments, and hospital infrastructure should totally help a never-down state of affairs.
Once we created the specs for our new surroundings, we checked out three issues: excessive redundancy, excessive resilience, and excessive efficiency. OU Health, like most healthcare organizations, runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and our infrastructure should totally help a never-down state of affairs. When it got here time to construct our new surroundings, 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 inside 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 every part we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system surroundings that may put OU Health on the map as a top-tier medical middle.
We constructed our new community on Cisco expertise. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Software Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, to assist phase our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Broad Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory programs. 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 another path.
We use Cisco ACI to route site visitors to particular locations inside our community. A terrific 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 Identification 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 (operating on historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them operating till we’re in a position to change 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 lively/lively and mirror one another, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility operating 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.
Considered one of our greatest 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 might host our information facilities and decrease our footprint dramatically. We partnered with TierPoint, and have 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 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 middle off-prem was considered one of our greatest enterprise and tech selections.
On June 3, 2023, OU Health 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 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 Health can entry what they want shortly, getting sufferers what they want sooner. 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 Health Elevate Our Group
Earlier than lengthy, my IT crew will have the ability to leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Health’s enterprise imaginative and prescient. We are able to combine new departments, areas, and services 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 are able to 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 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 greatest 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 priceless retention and recruitment software. Clinicians and researchers additionally need to work in high-tech environments. They would favor user-friendly programs over fighting digital kinds, drowning in infinite 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 Health is on a mission to raise and rework our group into a top-tier tutorial 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.
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