Ramkhamhaeng Hospital modernizes IT infrastructure to offer digital services with Dell Technologies
Ramkhamhaeng Hospital (RAM), one of the top five largest private hospital groups in Thailand, has digitally transformed, modernizing its infrastructure built entirely on Dell Technologies solutions to deliver improved 24/7 patient care, in real-time and remotely, wherever critical patient needs are. As a result of its digital transformation efforts, RAM has been able to achieve nearly 100% uptime, always-on operations and the ability to respond rapidly to evolving business needs.
The hospital’s vision is to establish a robust, highly efficient healthcare IT (HIT) infrastructure to support critical hospital information systems (HIS) that will form the best practice to implement in the 40 hospitals under its supervision, both in Bangkok and in provinces nationwide. To realize this vision, RAM deployed a data center stack comprising Dell Technologies servers, storage, data protection solutions and VMware virtualization software, as well as Dell endpoint devices including workstations, desktops and laptops. To date, large-scale implementations mirroring the RAM site have been deployed in three other hospitals within the group, namely Synphaet Ramintra Hospital and Sukumvit Hospital in Bangkok city, as well as Chiangmai Ram Hospital in Chiang Mai province.
As one of the main sites supporting other branch hospitals in the group, RAM – a 485-bed hospital housed within three patient buildings – hosts an enterprise data center and is also one of the disaster recovery (DR) sites supporting and providing shared services to smaller hospitals. In the immediate term, RAM expects to undertake smaller scale deployments in two branch hospitals – Buriram Ram Hospital and Phayao Ram Hospital, both located outside Bangkok. The branch hospitals will each house significantly smaller edge data centers (EDC) that will replicate in real-time to maintain data integrity, while tapping on shared resources hosted at RAM. With a data center built on all-flash technology and designed to scale out, the new implementations can be completed in under one month from project start to go-live date, including applications deployment, saving the hospital considerable time and IT resources.
“One of our goals is to build and implement a strategic and holistic foundation for our electronic health records (EHR), where assigned and authorized users within our network of hospitals can access the most up-to-date patient records and health information to provide immediate treatment and services to patients. This can happen only with a modernized IT infrastructure backbone,” said Dr. Pitchaya Somburanasin, director, Ramkhamhaeng Hospital. “With the standardized IT infrastructure in place, patients nationwide are assured of efficient, consistent and effective medical care no matter where, in whichever branch they seek treatment. Working with Dell Technologies, we are also confident that all patient data is secured from data center through to endpoints wherever data is accessed.”
Accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI) – a body that regularly reviews hospitals based on a set of global standards for quality of care and patient safety – RAM consistently receives top scores for compliance, particularly in terms of its hospital information systems.
Data recovery for business continuity
Power failures, connectivity issues and natural disasters can contribute to system and service downtime. To ensure business continuity while protecting applications and data, RAM uses Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and VMware technology at its DR sites to automate and orchestrate the failover process to a secondary site, in case of primary site failure.
This means that in addition to high availability and data integrity, RAM is also assured of business continuity and high productivity, with the ability to resume IT operations in a minimal amount of time and near-zero disruption to the business in the event of outages.
According to Dr. Pitchaya “The streamlined, high-performance infrastructure allows us to radically reduce IT complexity, improve operational efficiency, while empowering our health care practitioners to deliver quality medical care. This is essential to ensuring accurate diagnostics and timely personalized treatment resulting in better patient outcomes.”
Integrated digital workspace to deliver reliable digital health services in the new world
In a move to provide rapid round-the-clock diagnostics and treatment to critical care patients, RAM implemented Dell Technologies Unified Workspace to enable specialized physicians to seamlessly and securely access the hospital’s centralized EHR database remotely via their mobile devices, anytime the need arises. This includes access to patients’ medical imaging files such as computed tomography (CT) scans, lab reports, allergy information, treatment plans and complete medical history to facilitate best decision-making for the proper treatment to be administered to urgent, critical care patients.
“Instead of listening to a brief, doctors can access and view a patient’s full medical history and real-time health data securely on their device, be it CT scans or lab-test results, remotely when mobile or at home,” said Dr. Pitchaya. “Doctors can have the flexibility of working from anywhere or even be travelling and still give patients the assurance that consultation is available when they need it most.”
The Unified Workspace endpoint management solution helps the hospital secure and control its entire IT environment and all endpoints within the network, including smartphones and tablets. To safeguard patients’ privacy, the apps and data on these devices are protected with multi-layer security features for encryption and device controls to prevent unauthorized access and modifications.
Having already had this service in place, RAM was able to swiftly transition a majority of patient care onto its digital health platform during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the hospital was able to continue supporting patients remotely even during the lockdown when commute was restricted, thereby ensuring the safety of patients as well as health care providers. The hospital expects this level of service to grow in adoption as more patients leverage the convenience of digital health and get more comfortable with this form of personalized healthcare delivery.
“Over the past six years, we’ve transformed our IT infrastructure to enhance the performance and efficiency in our internal operations. Today, our long-standing collaboration with Dell Technologies has advanced our service delivery and customer experience to be some of the best in the industry. This is more than just performance but also the value proposition we offer our customers, without sacrificing efficiency and security,” Dr. Pitchaya added.
Transforming clinical care for superior patient outcomes
“With the rapid, unpredictable change affecting just about every industry – healthcare being no different – IT transformation is becoming a vital step for healthcare organizations to be resilient to disruptions and continue to deliver world-class patient care,” said Noppadol Punyatipat, managing director, Thailand, Dell Technologies. “Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help customers like Ramkhamhaeng Hospital with transforming their entire healthcare IT infrastructure for business agility, from point of care to the data center to the cloud, and raise the quality of patient care.”
With a comprehensive suite of healthcare-life sciences solutions, Dell Technologies is helping healthcare providers simplify administration and operations to revolutionize holistic patient care, transitioning from episodic to coordinated, advanced personalized care with a focus on prevention and wellness, ultimately improving individual patient outcomes.
