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I maintain day by day standing conferences with numerous teams inside our know-how workforce, and the questions virtually all the time drifts to: “What’s right this moment’s problem?” Typically that problem could be, “We will’t print at considered one of our ambulatory care amenities,” 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 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 deal with the foundation of the issue. This, together with our need to interchange our digital well being document and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s resolution to utterly overhaul our IT infrastructure in assist of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to carry 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 Stage I trauma middle and the state’s highest stage 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 remodel how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and scientific programs 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 attempting to work on the engine of a transferring prepare. The method has taken dedication and cautious planning, the work of my workforce 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 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 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 Faculty of Medication college follow and OU Medication, 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 scientific enterprise with nationwide greatest 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 intently with our IT management workforce on the Epic migration mission. 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, programs, information facilities and purposes, whereas conserving our legacy programs working.
Sadly, the environment was not in the very best form. It featured outdated gear, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched gear, and extra, which brought about 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 places.
This hindered workflows and brought about frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital employees. They needed to name us each time one thing went incorrect, and we had no solution 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 vital to make sure that our healthcare professionals may 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 latest answer, nor can we have a look at the most affordable. We don’t lower prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As a substitute, we have a look at probably the most superior tried and true programs. We take this strategy 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 inside mission 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 accomplice 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 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 every week, and our infrastructure should absolutely assist 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 workforce 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 gentle to construct all the pieces 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 know-how. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Software Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking answer, to assist phase 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 phase fails, we divert site visitors to an alternate 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 surface 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 programs.
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 laws. Customers can solely entry that atmosphere 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 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 historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them working 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 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 main information facilities fail, the third information middle will guarantee we stay operational.
One in all our greatest 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 accomplice 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 know-how helps decrease our working bills whereas defending the atmosphere. Shifting our information middle off-prem was considered one 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 main 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 gradual 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 look ahead to 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 workforce 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, 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. Up to now, each community addition was a one-off occasion. However now, we are able to develop our platform as wanted so as to add highly effective new purposes like information analytics and inhabitants well being administration (PHM) instruments to combination affected person info throughout a number of programs and applied sciences. Now that now we have rolled out Epic, now we have a stable 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 allow 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 device. Clinicians and researchers additionally wish to work in high-tech environments. They would favor user-friendly programs over battling digital varieties, drowning in infinite emails, or ready hours for medical photographs, check outcomes, and trial and affected person information. After they have probably 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 remodel 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 wish to make a distinction in Oklahoma and past by bringing the very best medical care to the populations we serve.
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