- Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Grants Clinicians Instant Logins
Hyper-convergence can be run in a cloud or on-premise environment and lets IT administrators control all virtual deployments from one place. This allows for less user error and faster technology speeds.
Workspot and Nutanix worked with a small group of channel partners, including SRP Medical, before releasing their collaboration for wide-spread deployment.
SRP Medical was looking for a solution to help it with the complex management and high cost of its VDI solution. SRP Medical needed a new data center and VDI environment in a small timeframe. The healthcare organization was able to embrace hyper-convergence and reduce costs and operating expenditures.
SRP Medical was also able to cut back on PC costs by repurposing its existing PCs into thin clients for VDI.
The Workspot Enterprise Connector is a Windows Virtual Machine that runs on the Nutanix cluster and provisions virtual desktops on the cluster. The Workspot Control converges the controls and allows IT administrators to monitor all security policies and desktop assignments from one place.
The hyper-converged solution offers additional security by design, which makes it appealing to healthcare organizations using VDI solutions to access PHI. VDI sessions connect directly from the end point to the virtual machine (VM) hosted on the Nutanix nodes. The connections are secured by the SSL-VPN and no data traverses through the cloud.
Hyper-converged infrastructure is becoming more popular in healthcare VDI deployments because it cuts down on the time it takes for clinicians to log in to their desktops and applications, and also cuts costs.
“A lot of organizations are demanding quick turnkey solutions that are easy to deploy, easy to maintain, easy to configure and they don’t have to take a lot of time integrating all the components in the data center before they can deploy them,” Pivot3 Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Mline told HITInfrastructure.com in a previous interview.
“There’s a challenge with physicians at the point of care, whether it’s in an admitting room or even just a consult room, logging into all the applications they need to get all the patient information and to capture their patient data as they’re doing their diagnosis,” he continued. “We found that physicians were spending something 10 minutes per engagement logging into all the applications, because every time they went into a new room, they had to log in again as their persona on all those applications.”
Value-based care initiatives are pushing healthcare organizations to examine their IT infrastructure to ensure that clinicians are able to access information quickly and accurately. The less time clinicians spend logging into and out of applications and computer systems, the more time they can spend with patients, improving quality of care.
SNHH Desktop Configuration Engineer Scot Tymowicz explained previously to HITInfrastructure.com that with its hyper-converged environment, clinicians only need to tap their badge on any desktop to gain access to their personal virtual desktop. This makes login times much faster and allowing clinicians to spend more time with the patients.
“What’s great about the hyper-converged environment is we use a single sign on solution so our staff can tap their badge on the cart, get logged in to the medical applications they use, and start doing their job,” Tymowicz said. “If they’re in the room with a patient doing their job, and there’s an emergency and they have to leave that room, they can quickly wave their badge over the computer to lock it and secure it.”
“Clinicians are no longer tasked with launching and logging into applications, making valuable patient interaction time.”
Hyper-converged VDI solutions give clinicians a faster and more secure way to access their personal desktops. It benefits organizations by letting them have more control over the desktop environment which reduces user error. Clinicians also no longer have to enter complicated passwords, taking up time that is better used interacting with a patient.