I dangle day by day standing conferences with quite a lot of teams inside of our era workforce, and the questions nearly at all times drifts to: “What’s these days’s problem?”  Now and again that problem could be, “We will be able to’t print at one in all our ambulatory care amenities,” or “Lately, we will’t ship diagnostic pictures to our faraway Radiologists.” The assembly is helping us to focal point our consideration, and because the CTO of OU Well being in Oklahoma Town, my activity is to get rid of the problems that crop up on the ones conferences and paintings to attenuate or get rid of those problems repeating one day.

To take action, we had to take on the foundation of the issue. This, at the side of our need to interchange our digital well being file and earnings cycle machine, contributed to OU Well being’s choice to fully overhaul our IT infrastructure in reinforce of our long-term organizational wishes.

OU Well being strives to carry innovation to our sufferers. As an educational well being machine, we perform one in all 71 Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated most cancers facilities within the nation, Oklahoma’s best Degree I trauma heart and the state’s absolute best degree NICU, providing top quality affected person care and working scientific trials resulting in thrilling new therapies. Greater than fixing our day by day complications, our IT overhaul will essentially develop into how we set up our infrastructure and administer the endeavor and scientific techniques we use to reinforce our healthcare execs and sufferers.

A whole revamp of a well being machine’s IT infrastructure is a frightening process. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like seeking to paintings at the engine of a shifting educate. The method has taken determination and cautious making plans, the paintings of my workforce and the reinforce of era companions like Cisco to position in combination and roll out an answer throughout OU Well being’s websites.

A Contemporary Get started, a Greenfield Community, and Some Obstacles

I’ve had the privilege of operating in healthcare IT for over 13 years. My earlier revel in comprises serving because the VP of Era Structure at Cablevision for seven years and two years at Discovery because the SVP of Endeavor Structure, the place I received a wealth of data in telecommunications and leisure. Following a six-month sabbatical, I had the chance to go back to my earlier position, however I made up our minds to make use of my experience to help others in a a lot more impactful approach. Looking at my spouse suffering for years together with her group’s IT as a circle of relatives apply supplier and educator made me notice the difficulties that stand up when coping with healthcare IT techniques. Due to a pal I had labored with previous in my occupation, I joined a healthcare consulting corporate launching my occupation in healthcare IT to lend a hand physicians and sufferers succeed in the most efficient imaginable results in hospital treatment.

OU Well being formally introduced in July 2021, following a ancient merger that blended the College of Oklahoma Faculty of Drugs college apply and OU Drugs, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Agree with) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first totally built-in instructional well being machine. The merger aligned the OU Well being scientific endeavor with nationwide absolute best practices around 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 intently with our IT management workforce at the Epic migration challenge. This initiative moved OU Well being to a brand new EHR machine. To succeed in this, we deployed a greenfield answer, which concerned putting in place new networks, techniques, information facilities and packages, whilst retaining our legacy techniques working.

Sadly, our surroundings used to be no longer in the most efficient form. It featured old-fashioned apparatus, overlapping answers, old-fashioned code, unpatched apparatus, and extra, which brought about a large number of demanding situations. Our community used to be additionally very sluggish, which intended that it took 15 to half-hour for a radiologist to obtain X-rays and CAT scans at our faraway places.

This hindered workflows and brought about frustration amongst our clinicians and clinic personnel. They needed to name us every time one thing went unsuitable, and we had no method to proactively observe and repair our techniques. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t understand how to fix it. It used to be transparent that an overhaul used to be vital to be sure that our healthcare execs may just focal point on taking care of their sufferers and no longer concern about technical problems.

We Sought after Redundancy, Resilience, and Efficiency—That Supposed Cisco

Healthcare organizations are quite conservative when shopping IT. We don’t search for the latest answer, 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 an alternative, we have a look at probably the most complex attempted and true techniques. We take this manner when deciding on lab apparatus, imaging and diagnostic techniques, surgical provides, and extra.

At OU Well being, now we have a long-standing courting with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Endeavor Infrastructure certification. Our inside challenge supervisor additionally brings a long time of revel in in managing large-scale Cisco deployments. Everyone knows that Cisco can ship extremely performant, redundant and resilient infrastructure. Alternatively, my activity calls for me to be purpose, so I attend occasions like Gartner Summits and the once a year HIMSS International Well being Convention & Exhibition to look what’s in the market. I’ve a very good clutch of the era panorama, and I’ve but to discover a spouse that may ship on its guarantees like Cisco.

Hospitals are 24/7 establishments, and clinic infrastructure will have to totally reinforce a never-down situation.

Once we created the specs for our new atmosphere, we checked out 3 issues: excessive redundancy, excessive resilience, and excessive efficiency. OU Well being, like maximum healthcare organizations, runs 24 hours an afternoon, seven days per week, and our infrastructure will have to totally reinforce a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new atmosphere, we didn’t ask, “Why Cisco?” The actual query used to be, “Why no longer Cisco?”

Redefining Our Community with Tool-Outlined Networking

When it got here time to pitch our new infrastructure, the workforce labored with Cisco’s community architects, exterior companions, and our inside lead architects. We put in combination a investment request and introduced it to our board. We anticipated our executives to approve lower than what our budgeted request used to be, however as an alternative we got the golf green mild to construct the entirety we had requested for – a state of the art community and machine atmosphere that might put OU Well being at the map as a top-tier clinical heart.

We constructed our new community on Cisco era. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Software Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking answer, to lend a hand section our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks during our Extensive Space Community (WAN) and a couple of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Then now we have a couple of routers to take care of our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or section fails, we divert visitors to another trail.

We use Cisco ACI to direction visitors to express locations inside of our community. A super instance is lab effects. Our lab apparatus doesn’t keep up a correspondence with the outdoor global, however our technicians will have to ship effects to our EMR. So, we’ve segmented the community to switch effects best to express servers that then add them to our data techniques.

Affected person well being comprises their healthcare information, and we prioritize the protection round our sufferers’ safe well being data (PHI). We used ACI to create a firewalled zone for PHI and different delicate information in keeping with HIPAA laws. Customers can best get admission to that atmosphere in the event that they’re acting a transaction requiring that data.

We additionally use Cisco UCS servers for scalable potency and agility, Cisco Identification Services and products Engine (ISE) for endpoint control, and we pass end-to-end on Cisco wi-fi answers, consisting of Cisco Catalyst 9130AX and 9166 get admission to issues and 9800-80 controllers. As well as, we followed Cisco VDI to combine a few of our legacy techniques (working on historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing those permits us to stay them working till we’re ready to interchange the techniques with out disrupting care.

Migrating Our Information Facilities to Make sure that IT Transparency

Our 3 new information facilities lift the weight of our new community. Two of our information facilities are energetic/energetic and reflect every different, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility working at 50% capability. Our 3rd information heart is for crisis restoration (DR) and has redundant hyperlinks to all our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Must the unthinkable occur and our number one information facilities fail, the 3rd information heart will be certain we stay operational.

Considered one of our largest demanding situations and alternatives used to be migrating our techniques and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable information facilities. As an alternative of establishing our personal on-prem information facilities, we made up our minds to spouse with a top-tier co-location facility who may just host our information facilities and decrease our footprint dramatically. We partnered with TierPoint, and have been some of the first shoppers at their new facility constructed with potency in thoughts. They architected the ability, cooling, HVAC, and development fabrics to cut back their carbon footprint. We get pleasure from powerful redundancy and backup options, and the energy-efficient era is helping decrease our working bills whilst protective the surroundings. Shifting our information heart off-prem used to be one in all our absolute best trade and tech choices.

On June 3, 2023, OU Well being went reside with Epic and our new infrastructure. We had already moved to our new number one community in March 2023, however this used to be the general check. We’re already reaping the rewards of our new Cisco infrastructure. We’re not fielding lawsuits about sluggish Wi-Fi speeds, connection disasters, community section outages and VPN problems. OU Well being can get admission to what they want temporarily, getting sufferers what they want sooner. I stay up for sitting down with our care groups to seek out tactics to enlarge, innovate and construct on our new platform.

Cisco Is Serving to OU Well being Carry Our Group

Ahead of lengthy, my IT workforce will have the ability to leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Well being’s trade imaginative and prescient. We will be able to combine new departments, places, and amenities into our community sooner as a result of we expected the wish to construct extra WAN connections and feature a complete map of each present and long run state. Prior to now, each community addition used to be a one-off tournament. However now, we will enlarge our platform as wanted so as to add robust new packages like information analytics and inhabitants well being control (PHM) gear to mixture affected person data throughout a couple of techniques and applied sciences. Now that we’ve got rolled out Epic, now we have a cast basis to lend a hand us push the envelope of high quality affected person care and state-of-the-art analysis.

The most productive minds gravitate to organizations that permit them upload price through supporting a trade imaginative and prescient as an alternative of changing issues.

Our new Cisco infrastructure is a precious retention and recruitment software. Clinicians and researchers additionally need to paintings in high-tech environments. They would favor user-friendly techniques over suffering with digital paperwork, drowning in never-ending emails, or ready hours for clinical pictures, check effects, and trial and affected person information. When they have got the most productive gear and IT works flawlessly, they may be able to focal point on their sufferers and analysis.

OU Well being is on a project to raise and develop into our group right into a top-tier instructional well being machine. Our management sees era as key to handing over on our imaginative and prescient and trade technique. We’re increasing our products and services and analysis tasks and can proceed to innovate in diabetes and most cancers care, pediatrics, and geriatrics. We need to make a distinction in Oklahoma and past through bringing the most efficient hospital treatment to the populations we serve.

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