Catholic Medical Center Taps IBM DB2 9 Viper to Improve Patient Care

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Catholic Medical Center, an association of eight large hospitals and twenty-three other medical facilities across the Republic of Korea, has selected the DB2 9 Viper data server to replace its existing database management system and create an integrated service-oriented architecture (SOA) that unifies critical hospital systems and consolidates patient records.

Catholic Medical Center (CMC) is a leading provider of a variety of medical services in Korea including cancer treatment, cardiology and rehabilitation. By utilizing DB2 9’s patented pureXML technology CMC is able, for the first time, to make use of all available patient data (including handwritten notes and XML files) for improved patient care and simplified application management. As a result, CMC is able to reduce costs and increase efficiency by doing away with outdated paper-based record systems.

“Now that we can store XML data directly on our IBM DB2 9 data server, we have been able to streamline access to medical records and improve care to our patients,” said Lee Hungu, Team Manager, Development Service Team, Catholic Medical Center. “At the same time, we can reduce our storage costs with the deep compression feature.”

DB2 9’s ability to support pureXML data allowed CMC to easily integrate its operations into a single program. The program acts as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that unifies hospital systems, including electronic medical records and picture-archiving communications systems files.

To help reduce the space required for all the data, employees at Catholic Medical Center have taken advantage of DB2 9’s advanced data compression capabilities. In addition, DB2 9’s High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR) functionality has allowed CMC staff to protect patient records in the event of a system outage.

Today’s announcement builds upon the global momentum DB2 9 has rapidly generated among customers and business partners. In just over six months after its launch, thousands of new customers have embraced the groundbreaking technology in DB2 9 to help them better manage and extract value from an avalanche of business information.

DB2 9 marks the culmination of a five-year IBM development project that has transformed traditional, static database technology into an interactive, vibrant data server that enables clients to improve their ability to manage varied types of information, such as documents, Web pages and digitally signed XML transactions. IBM’s new data server provides an industry first seamless and simultaneous information flow of both XML and relational data, regardless of format, platform or location and incorporates the most significant database technology enhancements introduced to the industry in more than two decades.