Meaningful Use and Compliance WITH A DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION SOLUTION
15 Inside the hospital, LaForge boiled 200 virtual
desktops down to three masters. This makes updates to the operating system or clinical applications much quicker than when they were loaded on traditional desktop machines. The organization’s virtual desktop implementation
started as a way to promote interoperability by giving emergency department and critical-care unit staff access to all their clinical applications, including EHR and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), on single machines. Previously, critical-care unit physicians could access
X-rays only in a special viewing room. Virtualizing the PACS terminal along with the EHR system on a single desktop eliminated that inconvenience. Now a critical care nurse can see a patient’s emergency department charts before the patient even arrives in the critical care department. Busting PACS out of a previous setup that limited
viewing to a small number of terminals was also the main reason Alameda County Medical Center in California decided to virtualize desktops with Citrix Systems Inc.’s XenDesktop. Mark Carlile, the facility’s manager of desktop support, described Alameda County Medical Center as a small hospital. For example, there isn’t a radiologist on staff 24 hours a day. He added, however, “We have a Level 2 trauma center here. We get a lot of business. When a trauma case comes in, [staff] need access to the PACS system immediately.”
The medical center is in the midst of a three-year transition to a Siemens AG EHR system, which it plans to roll out to facilities on six campuses: the hospital, three clinics, a long-term rehabilitation center, and a psychiatric facility. Carlile expects to run the EHR software in a virtualized environment. This will reduce the amount of data sent over the wide area network.
HIPAA Compliance
and Desktop Virtualization With their authentication technology, virtual desktop implementations help control the flow of patient data and verify who is using which applications at which time. The technology also gives IT administrators peace of mind if computers are lost or stolen: No data is stored locally, and users must log in to access remotely stored patient records. This means a data breach can be stopped cold. “Compliance with HIPAA privacy requirements was not
a main driver when Columbia Hospital started its first virtualization tests six years ago,” said LaForge, “But now that strengthened HIPAA rules carry heavier penalties, [our] virtual desktop implementation fit right in with the facility’s privacy compliance efforts.” LaForge added, “We were going down this road of our
network upgrade for a very long time. We were looking at it primarily from the aspects of ease of administration, ease of rollout, and just replacing the old equipment. We knew where we wanted to go with it, and the fact that the security architecture and just the underlying architecture of it address so many things like HIPAA—that was a bonus for us.”
Take the Guesswork Out of Virtualization
More than ever, healthcare organizations want to realize the benefits of desktop virtualization—cost savings, ease of management, improved security, and platform independence. Our Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Assessment (VDI) evaluates your unique server, storage, and networking needs in order to help you pick the right desktops to virtualize.
A VDI Assessment examines multiple aspects of your current computing environment to determine the desktops and users that are the best fit for virtualization. Make smarter investment decisions with valuable information on:
n Organizational drivers n Desktop virtualization criteria n Users and locations n Breakdown by department and function n Access infrastructure and network n End-user computers n End-user applications
Call your Account Manager today to learn how we can help you improve manageability and security with a VDI solution. 1.800.395.8685
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