- Virtualization Growth Continues in Health IT Infrastructure
SCL Health was able to maintain the device security controls required by HIPAA through its choose-your-own-device (CYOD) deployment.
SCL Health first implemented Citrix several years ago when it opened a new hospital based on Citrix technology. The technology deployment saved the organization $300,000 in health IT infrastructure costs, according to SCL Health.
The organization chose to implement Citrix technology throughout the rest of its locations.
“With Citrix solutions, we’ve been able to give our clinicians the freedom to work anywhere, which in turn means they are more efficient with their time,” SCL Health Vice President of IT Operations Scott Alderman said in a statement. “This increased efficiency translates into more time available to spend with patients providing the care they value most.”
“From an IT perspective, Citrix allows us to address the vision of our business leaders to deliver value-based healthcare while maintaining security and streamlining the budget,” Alderman continued. “IT is no longer perceived as a roadblock, but rather as an enabler of the organization’s success.”
Healthcare organizations are realizing the benefits of virtual workspaces because they let clinicians take advantage of technology without being burdened by login restrictions or physical restrictions.
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) plays a large role in value-based care IT infrastructure improvements because it consolidates processes, saving organizations money, and gives clinicians more time to interact with patients.
VDI uses abstraction to remote desktop operating systems to mobile devices. VDI also separates the desktop environment and application layer from a user’s endpoint device. Users access their personal desktop via any thin client device on the network without having to go through a long login process.
VDI is also more secure by design because the endpoint is only used to access and display the desktop environment and no data is stored on the endpoint.
Southern New Hampshire Health (SNHH) implemented virtual desktops using Pivot3 tools to solve point of care challenges and to improve on value-based care initiatives. Pivot3 Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Miline told HITInfrastructure.com that the demand for virtualized environments in healthcare is high.
“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,” said Miline.
“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.”
Healthcare organizations are able to support a more efficient and cost effective health IT infrastructure by implementing virtualization. Clinicians can give patients better quality care when they don’t need to spend so much time logging into secure systems, and IT administrators are able to have more control over their infrastructure when it is controlled from a virtualized datacenter.
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