Research carried out by the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and IT giant, Dell, has revealed that as government and healthcare organisations invest millions in IT to improve accessibility, affordability and quality of healthcare for patients, hospital datacentres are finding themselves struggling to cope.

 

As part of the survey hospital IT executives at small and medium hospitals in the UK, US, Canada, China, France and Germany, were asked to assess their readiness to support the new IT demands which will arise as a result of the implementation of systems such as electronic medical records (EMRs) and digital image reading.

 

“We cannot simply throw servers and storage at information demand or complexity will over-run budgets and leave little support for the strategic IT priorities which support healthcare reform and business initiatives ”

And the results suggest there will be major challenges associated with scaling datacentres to meet the demands and to effectively support technology at the point of care – the biggest priority for executives in nearly every country.

 

The Healthcare Enterprise Survey shows hospital executives believe programmes such as EMRs, health information exchanges, digital image storage capacity and business intelligence will increase demand on their datacentres by an average of 20-50% over the next two years. And without speedy adoption of virtualisation, hospitals that simply add additional servers and storage will end up perpetuating the complexity and leaving themselves open to delays and system breakdowns.

 

The survey reveals that information technology at the point of care is one of the top priorities for hospitals and most IT executives expect their budgets for this to increase over the coming years. They singled out the scaling and management of storage as their greatest challenge and the upgrading of storage as their best opportunity to improve datacentre efficiency.

 

IT improvements are a key priority for health services

Jamie Coffin, vice president of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences, said: “Small and medium hospitals are a sizeable component of the healthcare delivery system in most countries and we must ensure all hospitals – large and small, new and existing – are equipped with the right IT infrastructure to support information demands today and in the future. We cannot simply throw servers and storage at information demand or complexity will over-run budgets and leave little support for the strategic IT priorities which support healthcare reform and business initiatives.”

 

The report includes a list of six action points which will help hospitals improve their efficiency and scalability, allowing them to make the most of IT advancements. They are:

 

The report states: “Now is the time for hospitals to prepare their datacentres to handle strategic reform and healthcare priorities and for government leaders to consider the significant contribution these hospitals can make to an information infrastructure that streamlines administration, improves diagnosis and decision-making at the point of care and co-ordination and quality of patient care across the healthcare system.”

 

One organisation which has already benefited from this approach is the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, which employs more than 1,600 people. The implementation of Dell virtualisation systems across the estate has helped reduce server management and power consumption by 70% as well as enabling the trust to deliver new services.

 

Trust chief executive, Dr Zafar Chaudry, said: “The virtual infrastructure has changed the way that clinical employees perceive technology. Now, if a doctor thinks a new system for analysing data from patient questionnaires would be useful, they come and ask us because they know we can set it up in a matter of weeks.”