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VMware Enables Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to Deliver Secure, Virtualized Electronic Health Records for Private Physician Groups via Internal Cloud


WEBWIRE

VMware and Partners Concordant and Third Brigade Deliver Robust ‘Software as a Service’ Solution to Hundreds of Physician Practices

PALO ALTO, Calif. – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has deployed the VMware platform and transformed its Electronic Health Records (EHR) datacenter into an internal cloud that allows it to deliver a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for electronic health records to more than 200 private physician practices throughout Massachusetts.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a preeminent teaching hospital and its renowned staff treats more than 250,000 patients annually. In addition, the Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization (BIDPO) provides a variety of services to support hundreds of its member physician practices that are independently owned. BIDPO recently implemented a solution from eClinicalWorks that provides electronic health records and practice management capabilities to help clinically integrate its member practices.

To meet the needs of the BIDPO member practices, the solution had to be reliable and secure as well as flexible and scalable. BIDPO chose to implement an internal cloud that aggregates computing and network resources in the datacenter to provide the availability and scalability necessary for a mission-critical solution. The internal cloud provides BIDPO with these capabilities through an efficient architecture that minimizes hardware requirements, offers BIDPO superior control and manageability, and will maximize choice as BIDPO evolves its solution in the future.

The solution was designed by BIDMC and Concordant, a leading provider of consulting and managed services for the healthcare industry. Concordant fully deployed the solution and also provides ongoing helpdesk and system management services for BIDPO. In addition, BIDPO engaged with VMware partner Third Brigade to help secure the end-to-end solution. Third Brigade provides server and application protection to safeguard the virtual machines containing the sensitive personal, medical and financial data that physician practices enter into the eClinicalWorks system.

“We have been able to leverage great relationships and powerful solutions from three companies to effectively deploy our service to physician practices via the cloud – without requiring physicians to deploy any hardware in their practices or having to provide physicians with constant on-site technical support,” said Bill Gillis, manager clinical application services, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We knew the VMware platform would be ideal for the deployment because of the efficiency, control, and choice that it provides.”

In fact, the value of the cloud-based solution was tested early in the project. A specification was changed unexpectedly and Gillis estimates it would have cost $300,000 to make the necessary adjustments in a traditional hardware-based environment. In the virtualized cloud environment, the cost was $20,000, which represents a savings of 93 percent compared to the traditional approach. Furthermore, changing a hardware-based solution would have required weeks to implement, delaying the project significantly.

In addition to that substantial capital savings, virtualization is generating ongoing operational savings for BIDPO. Concordant has found that its virtualized solutions can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for practice management and EHR systems by 40 percent. “We selected Concordant based on its rich expertise in IT design, implementation, and management of EMR environments,” explained Gillis.

Gillis also understands the critical role of security, which is why Third Brigade played such a vital role in the solution. “We engaged Third Brigade from day one because this solution involves medical records and other personal health information,” said Gillis. “We needed this project to be as secure as possible so we could mitigate potential risk. Third Brigade’s breadth of solution and integration with the VMware platform was crucial for us to help ensure robust security, and Third Brigade has been very responsive.”

Choice was another very important aspect of the project. BIDPO understands the value of building a modular solution that can evolve and grow in the years ahead. BIDPO wanted the flexibility to buy components and manage additional applications seamlessly as more physician practices come online. For that kind of extensibility and manageability, BIDPO felt that VMware’s virtualized cloud platform was the best fit for the project.



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