Challenges

• Implement, in a very short time, a new storage solution to manage the volume and access thirty-year’s worth of archived of health information (including patient records and medical images) for two remote hospitals, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year
• Overcome existing storage limitations by deploying a modular and standardized storage solution that reduces storage costs, enhances data availability, and ensures information system stability
• Support management and online storage of data produced by various medical imaging services (such as magnetic resonance imaging and scanners) to improve the quality of medical care, while supporting data volume that is growing approximately 10 terabytes per year
• Facilitate the transition from an administrative information system to a medical-oriented information system, improving economy and performance and ensuring better patient care, both in the emergency department and for clinics conducting ongoing treatments
• Deploy a storage architecture based on a standardized network that integrates all the entities of the hospital complex through a 12 km fiber optic connection
• Reduce the total cost of infrastructure ownership through storage consolidation with less complexity and better internal control of the system
• Implement a lower-cost business continuity plan, guaranteeing the protection of the hospital complex’s digital assets while simultaneously laying the foundation for a private cloud

Solutions

• Worked with Oracle Partner Net Computer Services (NCS) to replace, within two months, an obsolete architecture of servers and storage with the Pillar Axiom 600 storage solution, operating with full redundancy
• Consolidated more than 10 terabytes of health data on servers and virtual machines to a single storage solution, without impacting the productivity and continuous operation of the hospital information system
• Integrated all data generated by medical imaging services, multimedia information, and video, without volume restrictions
• Enabled hospital practitioners to ensure patients receive high quality care by accessing data in real time, through the storage solution’s quality-of-service architecture
• Reduced data backup operations from two hours and 18 minutes on the old system, to 38 minutes, using Pillar Axiom 600, with no impact on application performance
• Cut total cost for storage infrastructure ownership in half by consolidating four independent storage arrays into one Pillar Axiom system
• Centralized storage management to a single console, improving administrators’ productivity and their ability to focus on core tasks
• Implemented a business continuity plan, based on the synchronous mirroring of two storage systems at the two main hospital sites to guarantee the hospital’s digital assets are protected and highly accessible

Why Oracle

GHICL ’s objective was to consolidate its entire hospital information system onto one storage system that could support entities across the hospital. Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 met this aim perfectly, thanks to its modular design, which enables independent addition of I/O performance and storage capacity, thus matching investments to real needs as opposed to inaccurate growth assumptions. In addition, Pillar Axiom 600 was considered as a strategic solution for the IT department, thereby reducing the storage complexity. As a “plug-in and forget” solution, Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 enabled us to refocus on creating value and business innovation. GHICL considered the end-user license agreement as a unique, value added service that would make it possible to build in a durable and direct engagement with Oracle.

Implementation Process

With the help of Oracle partner NCS, GHICL implemented Oracle’s storage solution after a massive migration of the ten terabytes of data stored in its HIS. The implementation did not disrupt activity, enabling the HIS to function continuously without interruption. NCS followed a migration strategy suggested by the Oracle Professional Services team.

Customer Advice –
–    Consistent dialogue between Oracle and GHICL produced a technological solution optimized for a precisely defined need
–    Continuous engineering throughout the project allowed evolving a business continuity plan for the entire information system’s storage base, while simultaneously providing the foundation for a private cloud

Partner

Resources

• Le Groupement des Hôpitaux de l’Institut Catholique de Lille divise par 2 le TCO de sa solution de stockage et garantit des accès temps réels aux données médicales les plus critiques