I maintain each day standing conferences with numerous teams inside our expertise crew, and the questions virtually at all times drifts to: “What’s right now’s problem?” Generally that problem may be, “We will’t print at considered one of our ambulatory care amenities,” or “At this time, 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 attenuate 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 exchange our digital well being document and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s determination to fully overhaul our IT infrastructure in assist of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to deliver 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 Stage I trauma heart and the state’s highest stage NICU, providing high-quality affected person care and working scientific trials resulting in thrilling new remedies. Greater than fixing our each day complications, our IT overhaul will basically rework how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and scientific techniques we use to assist our healthcare professionals and sufferers.
A whole revamp of a well being system’s IT infrastructure is a frightening activity. 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 crew and the assist 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 consists of 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 position, however I made a decision to make use of my experience to help others in a way more impactful method. Watching my spouse struggling for years along 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 techniques. Because of a buddy 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 School of Medication school observe and OU Medication, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Belief) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first totally built-in tutorial 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 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 crew 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, techniques, information facilities and functions, whereas retaining our legacy techniques working.
Sadly, our surroundings was not in the perfect form. It featured outdated tools, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched tools, and extra, which brought on 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 on frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital workers. They needed to name us every time one thing went incorrect, and we had no technique to proactively monitor and restore our techniques. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know the right way to restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was crucial to make sure that our healthcare professionals may 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 latest resolution, 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 techniques. We take this method when deciding on lab tools, imaging and diagnostic techniques, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, we have now a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inner undertaking supervisor additionally brings a long time 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 International Well being Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a superb grasp of the expertise panorama, and I’ve but to discover a associate that may ship on its guarantees like Cisco.
Hospitals are 24/7 establishments, and hospital infrastructure should totally assist a never-down situation.
Once 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 totally assist a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new atmosphere, 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 crew 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 mild to construct every thing we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system atmosphere 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 (Utility Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, to assist section our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Vast Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Then we have now 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. A fantastic instance is lab outcomes. Our lab tools 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 data techniques.
Affected person well being consists of 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 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 techniques (working on historical machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them working till we’re capable of substitute the techniques with out disrupting care.
Migrating Our Information 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 working at 50% capability. Our third information heart is for catastrophe restoration (DR) and has redundant hyperlinks to all our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Ought to the unthinkable occur and our major information facilities fail, the third information heart will guarantee we stay operational.
Considered one of our greatest challenges and alternatives was migrating our techniques and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable information facilities. As a substitute of constructing our personal on-prem information facilities, we determined to associate 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 purchasers 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 strong redundancy and backup options, and the energy-efficient expertise helps decrease our working bills whereas defending the atmosphere. Shifting our information heart off-prem was considered one of our greatest enterprise and tech selections.
On June 3, 2023, OU Well being 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 check. We’re already reaping the rewards of our new Cisco infrastructure. We’re not fielding complaints about gradual 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 look ahead to sitting down with our care groups to search 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 crew 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 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 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 techniques and applied sciences. Now that we have now rolled out Epic, we have now 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 permit them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as an alternative of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a precious retention and recruitment instrument. Clinicians and researchers additionally need to work in high-tech environments. They would like user-friendly techniques over scuffling with digital types, 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 rework our group right 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 companies 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 perfect medical care to the populations we serve.
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