Sanford Health Integrates Clinical Information System to Enhance Health Operations From the Inside Out

In a world of booming technology, roughly 85 percent of all U.S. hospitals still rely on paperbased charts for record keeping. Even when information does exist in digital form, it is often stored in a proprietary system that can't be accessed easily. Healthcare providers typically have multiple data systems that may not work together very well. The risk is that patients may be asked to share the same information repeatedly, undergo redundant testing, or receive duplicate billing statements from multiple information systems.

"We had heard positive things about MSI and after meeting with members of the MSI team we were also impressed." - Daryl Bouma
IT Director and CTO
Sanford Health

Sanford Health did not want its patients to have to deal with these challenges. The health system's vision, "Improving the Human Condition," is the reason why Sanford Health decided to ditch the paper-based bandwagon and fully integrate all of its clinical information systems. Sanford's new system utilizes robust IBM hardware and storage technologies from MSI Systems Integrators to provide a truly better system for patients and its internal clients.

The Challenges

Before launching its new information system to integrate its operations, Sanford Health had a different information system for each of its hospitals and clinics. This posed a risk for duplication of efforts between the offices when it came to sharing and collecting patient information, billing activities, and testing procedures. The former system was also limited in its ability to capture clinical data electronically, so caregivers were relying on paper charts. These charts resided in one physical spot, making it tough for physicians to access important medical information.

There were also backup challenges. Having a designated tape drive for each server required taking down applications for every disk reallocation and system upgrade. In an environment like Sanford's, downtime could mean significant financial risk.

The new information system would both digitize and centralize information across Sanford's offices while improving the organization's backup processes. But the technology required some new hardware that Sanford did not have-namely, UNIX® servers and a Storage Area Network (SAN). Sanford explored options with two IBM® hardware partners and two HP® hardware partners before selecting IBM Premier Business Partner MSI Systems Integrators. The decision was based on reputation:

"We had heard positive things about MSI and after meeting with members of the MSI team we were also impressed," said Daryl Bouma, IT Director and CTO, Sanford Health.

The MSI Solution

MSI replaced Sanford Health's direct attached storage with an IBM SAN running the information system on highly stable and scalable IBM System p® servers. Extremely versatile, the pSeries is designed to simplify IT infrastructures by running different applications concurrently on multiple operating systems. Each processor in a System p server can support multiple dynamic micro-partitions, delivering extensive operational flexibility, higher system utilization and consolidated system administration at a lower cost.

MSI also implemented an IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) to give Sanford an effective way to manage and upgrade its storage. MSI helped Sanford move from expensive Fiber Channel disk to a low-cost Serial ATA (SATA) computer bus technology for large file-size image applications. SATA communicates over a high-speed serial link to transfer data between hard disks and optical drives.

In addition, the Sanford staff implemented VMware®, which enabled them to virtualize many of its Windows® servers. Now data that does not need to be on high-cost storage can be moved to a lower-cost solution while protecting the availability of critical applications.

The Benefits

The biggest advantage has been the reduction in downtime to manage and upgrade storage. With the SVC, Sanford can reallocate disk with maximum flexibility, efficiency and speed while avoiding the downtime and costs associated with having a designated tape drive for each server.

"We have on several occasions moved a given host's data from one disk system to another while the host was still up and accessible by the end users," said Bouma.

Sanford can also move items from slower disk to Fiber Channel to gain performance or move data from one Fiber Channel system to another to take advantage of and/or create extra free space.

In addition the health system is seeing more overall reliability than in the past in terms of getting backups done consistently and effectively every night, without the risk of human error involved in loading individual tapes.

On the front end Sanford's new system will eliminate duplication of efforts, as well as make electronic data such as patient charts and records available from nearly anywhere-even from the physician's home. Soon this same functionality will allow patients to access their own medical information... something most people cannot get from their healthcare provider.

Better uptime, manageability and accuracy: MSI has helped build the information technology foundation for Sanford Health.