Composable infrastructure

Modernizing their IT infrastructure before COVID-19 gave these healthcare organizations a leg up when disruption occurred

A recent Forbes.com article describes how the COVID-19 pandemic is fast-tracking digital transformation initiatives for many companies due to increased IT needs. The article also explains how organizations that completed (or are currently working on) IT modernization, have been able to adjust more effectively to the changing IT needs caused by the pandemic.

Several HPE customers recently undertook a digital transformation journey, and their stories are highlighted in the links below – all published before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. As I read their stories, I can’t help but think these organizations are in a better position to handle today’s sudden IT challenges because of their recent IT modernization efforts.

Real digital transformation stories from healthcare organizations

Below I’ve highlighted two healthcare organizations that HPE recently worked with on digital transformation initiatives.

• • Elbe Kliniken (Elbe Clinics), Germany

With locations in Stade, Buxtehude, and Bremervörde, the Elbe Clinics provide comprehensive medical care to patients throughout the Elbe-Weser Triangle of northern Germany. State-of-the-art IT infrastructure provides clinicians quick access to patient records and streamlines administration so patients have a positive experience from admission through discharge.

As of the publishing of the case study in February 2020, Elbe Kliniken was migrating from legacy infrastructure to composable infrastructure. Dr. Armin Ortlam, head of IT at the Elbe Clinics, reported that early results of their modernization efforts were quite promising. Their new software-defined approach to delivering applications and services now enables IT to respond with greater speed and efficiency to the needs of clinicians and their patients.

He explains, “We’ve automated quite a bit with HPE Synergy. We built the entire VMware environment, and can now provision servers automatically. This allows us to respond to the needs of the clinics much more quickly and easily.”

While the migration to HPE Synergy is still in progress, Dr. Ortlam is confident the move will position the Elbe Clinics to handle ongoing growth of digitalized medical data, and enable IT to respond with speed and efficiency to the needs of clinicians and their patients. “We now have a modern, software-defined approach to delivering IT services on a very stable platform that will support the mission of the Elbe Clinics for years to come.”

• • San Vicente Fundación Hospital, Colombia

Another such organization is San Vicente Fundación Hospital, a private, non-profit healthcare institution in Colombia and a leading healthcare services provider in Latin America. Each year, San Vicente Fundación Hospital treats around 40,300 patients, manages 200,000 medical appointments, performs more than 23,500 surgeries and 12,000 procedures, and issues about 8,500 prescriptions. Every day, its information system handles more than 4,500 clinical orders to manage procedures, laboratories, diagnostic images, and medical services.

As demand for its services from patients surged, the hospital needed to modernize its operations and streamline its processes. Their current solutions could not keep up with the needs of their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Data Administration applications.

Response times were slow, failover took too long, and scalability was limited. The lack of speed in generating data slowed the process of carrying out even routine work.

San Vicente Fundación Hospital decided to modernize their infrastructure, which included composable infrastructure, a robust ERP platform, and a pay-per-use IT model. With the new systems in place, staff response times dropped from 1,000 to 300 milliseconds. A single platform now handles massive data sets, and IT deploys new servers quickly through template-based automation – resulting in simplified administration.

The hospital is confident its IT upgrades allow it to deliver healthcare efficiently now—and into the future. “The new solution has achieved the performance, stability, reliability, and compliance required by the hospital,” says Edwin José Flórez Osorno, an ICT Analyst at San Vicente Fundación Hospital. “The new system is three to four times faster than the previous one, thanks to the infrastructure’s high performance and the network connections of at least 10 gigabits per second.”

IT modernization: a never-ending quest

As enterprises adopt processes to be more efficient in all areas, digital transformation should never end. Recent events show us how important it is to keep IT modern and agile. Businesses worldwide will always be digitally transforming to stay competitive – during both normal times and amidst crisis events.

To read the complete success stories, visit:

• • Composable Infrastructure Platform Automates IT for Healthcare Provider, Elbe Clinics
  • San Vicente Fundación Hospital Speeds Up Its Delivery of Healthcare Services

To learn more about composable infrastructure, visit the HPE Synergy website.