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IBM Cures Sankara's Network Woes|
- By Priyanka Akhouri, Jan 08, 2008 1619 hrs IST
- Tags : IBM Cures Sankara s Network Woes
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Sankara Nethralaya is a special institution for ophthalmic care based in Chennai. On 6th September 1978, Sankara Nethralaya began its relentless journey in providing world-class eye care at affordable cost. Its data centre located at Chennai, has 700 servers working across cities like Kolkata and Bangalore, with plans to expand it further to other cities. The hospital has major servers for hospital management systems and electronic medical records.
Need for a Solution:
The hospital was using its home grown solution and tools with operating systems (OS) available on network management. Network being the primary concern for the hospital, these solutions were not compatible for the hospital in terms of the features, scalability, and performance.
T Rathinam, director (IT) of Sankara Nethralaya said "We were looking for a network management solution, better healthcare management system, asset management, and IT monitoring, etc. Also we required a solution that would help us to quickly identify and visibly locate network problematic area." It also needed a solution to monitor where and how much of its resources were being used.
According to M.K. Manavalan, head (IT) of Sankara Nethralaya, "We were witnessing a challenge of network downtime and were facing problems in finding out where the problem was originating from."
Solution:
Network management being the primary need, Sankara evaluated vendors like CA. Finally it zeroed in on IBM s Network Operations Center Inside (NOC-Inside). With this solution the hospital didn't have to invest a huge amount of money. "NOC-Inside is highly compatible as per the requirements of the hospital. There were no other parallel products with such features packed together," added Rathinam.
NOC-Inside offers compliance with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards. It also has software maintenance services. Rathinam commented, "Everything is packed together and is working so well. We did a survey with various users, our customers and were thoroughly impressed with the quality of the product. Besides the solution, off course, the name IBM has its own weight."
Benefits:
The solution has had tremendous impact on many key areas. Using NOC-Inside, the hospital is now able to locate the area of network problem within 2-3 minutes.
"We were interested in network management. We have a centre in Kolkata and one in Bangalore. If somebody from Kolkata reports that the network access is slow, with this solution the help desk can view the overall networking picture of Sankara Nethralaya and then click on to the route of Kolkata. Once they click on to that area, you can keep zooming to that area," explained Rathinam. The solution helps to quickly identify and visibly locate the problem, allowing the hospital to send out people to the problematic area in order to solve the problem.
The solution also helps in asset management. Software management, patch deployment, etc. can be managed very well with this solution in a centralized location.
"It helps in IT traffic analysis. Since Sankara is a charitable organization, costs are our major concern. We need to have proper monitoring of where and how our resources are used," added Rathinam.
The other business benefits of NOC-Inside are that it provides not only the usual reactive response but also a more proactive response, along with a clear Return on Investments (ROI) in terms of business criticality.
IT plays an important role in addressing the challenges faced by the hospital. In terms of processes and medical treatment more and more medicines depend on technology.
The hospital does not face any major HR issues in the hospital as it has tied up with some of the best companies like TCS that offer services HR. The hospital's team works closely with these companies.
About the Deal:
The deployment started in May 2007 and the hospital explored the different features of the solution. In all, the deployment of the solution took 2 days of training, and 10 days of hand holding by IBM. Within 15 days everything was easily up and in the next 48 hours the hospital was able to use the product.
"There were no problems faced during the deployment. It was an absolutely seamless implementation. The solution has gone on full fledged basis now in the hospital," said Rathinam.
The hospital has also deployed other servers at their data centre from IBM and HP. It is using 14-15 supporting servers for voice information and medical transaction.
Future Plans:
"We have started implementing Electronic Medical Records (EMR). In this all the details of the patients will be electronically entered and managed. This is even more critical as this would be in the operation theatre," added Rathinam.
Currently the hospital has a basic infrastructure to begin the EMR. To ensure that the EMR is safely running in the next 5-10 years, it needs to strengthen its infrastructure. In 2008 the hospital plans to extend EMR for branches in Kolkata and Bangalore. The hospital is on the verge of integrating computerized equipments into EMR directly.
For future deployments the hospital is looking forward to deploy storage systems that will enable it to store substantive amount of storage in terms of information on patient's picture. "Size of the images is one critical factor that we need to handle. Each picture comprises of size 40mb-50 mb. So we need a huge storage system to accommodate all this, which will be integrated with our EMR," added Rathinam. Investment on this will be beneficial for the hospital.
SNAPSHOT
Sankara Nethralaya is a special institution for ophthalmic care based in Chennai. On 6th September 1978 Sankara Nethralaya began its relentless journey in providing world-class eye care at an affordable cost. It is an institution with a missionary spirit and is making a visible difference to the lives of millions of visually impaired people. With its data centre located at Chennai, it has 700 servers working across cities like Kolkata, Bangalore, and plans to expand it further to other cities. The hospital has major servers for the hospital management systems and for electronic medical records.
Challenges:
* Looking for a network management solution
* Required a compatible solution for the hospital in terms of the features, scalability, and performance
* Needed a solution for better healthcare management system, asset management, and IT monitoring
* Witnessing a challenge of network downtime and were facing problems in finding out where the problem was originating from
*Needed a solution to monitor where and how much of its resources are used
Solution:
IBM's Network Operations Center Inside (NOC-Inside)
Benefits:
* Enabled the hospital to locate the area of network problem in a span of 2-3 minutes, thereby solving the issue easily
* NOC-Inside helps to quickly identify and visibly locate the problem
* Helps in asset management
* Software management, patch deployment, etc. can be managed very well with this solution in a centralized location
* It helps in IT traffic analysis. It monitors where how much resources are used
* Helps to monitor where is the bottleneck in IT, what time it was shooting a peak, and why other issues are slowing down
* Provides a clear ROI in terms of business criticality
Related Links:
IBM Chips to Boost Enterprise Networks
IBM Deploys Unified Communications Soln for IDEA
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