Performance-enhancing storage boosts healthcare in ThailandSamitivej Hospital improves patient care in Bangkok through continued development of healthcare services with cutting-edge healthcare information system backed by cost-effective flash-optimized storage

“ In the past, we could achieve something like 4,000 IOPS with more than 100 disks. With the flash-optimized Dell Compellent solution we can reach up to 100,000 IOPS with sub-millisecond latency on the database and far fewer disks. Even at that impressive rate, the Dell solution consumes less energy and generates much less heat.” Dr. Panuratn Thanyasiri, Chief Information Officer, Samitivej Hospital

Customer profile

Company Samitivej Hospital

Industry Healthcare

Country Thailand

Employees 3,000

Website www.samitivejhospitals.com

Business need

To continue improving patient

services, Samitivej Hospital looked

to upgrade its hospital information

system (HIS) environment and needed

a flash-based storage solution to

deliver the required IOPS.

SolutionThe hospital deployed

Dell Compellent flash-optimized

storage arrays across its two

main hospitals as part of a Dell-

based infrastructure that also

features Dell PowerEdge servers,

Dell EqualLogic and Dell PowerVault

storage, and Dell Wyse zero clients.

It receives reliable and rapid support

from Dell Compellent Copilot.

Benefits• Better patient services delivered

as storage maximizes value of

HIS environment

• Achieving 100,000 IOPS with

significantly fewer disks reduces

power and cooling costs

• More IT time for strategic projects

with hours saved each week on

management

• Hospital gains flash-optimized

storage at 30 percent less cost of

competing solution

• Maximized uptime with highly

available platform and disaster

recovery

Solutions at a glance• Storage

• Data Center Consolidation

• Data Recovery

• Cloud Client-Computing

• Deployment Services

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A key example of this is Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok. As a leading private healthcare provider in Thailand, it operates a network of facilities from cosmetic to tertiary care, and employs 3,000 healthcare professionals across its two major hospitals: Samitivej Sukhumvit and Samitivej Srinakarin. Both hospitals have successfully used HIS technology for more than 10 years to help deliver better, more effective patient care. Nevertheless, the MedTrak HIS system in place had been superseded by a more advanced system, TrakCare, and the hospital recognized it was time to upgrade its technology.

A HIS environment to continue improving patient servicesThe Windows® XP-based platform underpinning MedTrak was coming to the end of its lifecycle, and the hospital had to think about the future. Chief Information Officer at Samitivej Hospital, Dr. Panuratn Thanyasiri, explains, “Our operations are expanding by five percent a year, making our HIS environment more important than ever. The existing HIS system was already showing signs of strain. We would experience downtime of 10 to 15 minutes very frequently, so we needed to move from Windows XP as soon as possible as we upgraded the software.”

The transition to TrakCare would radically change things. The environment, which runs on Windows 7, would future proof the hospital’s HIS for years to come. What’s more, it offered improved functionality for greater patient services and support for tablet devices, which Samitivej Hospital plans to introduce in the coming years. Still, an upgrade required a fundamental rethink of the IT platform underpinning the solution to deliver the required IOPS

(Input/Output Operations Per Second). Dr. Thanyasiri says, “To get the most out of our HIS investment, only flash-optimized storage would do.”

The search for the right HIS platformSamitivej launched a public tender process for the HIS environment’s entire IT platform. It invited bids from leading providers for servers and storage. Dell was in a strong position from the start since Dell servers and storage had successfully supported the old HIS environment. In addition, the hospital had already chosen Dell Wyse P25 zero clients to provide the front end to the TrakCare system across Samitivej Sukhumvit and Samitivej Srinakarin.

Products & Services

Services

Dell Deployment Services

Dell Compellent Copilot Support

Hardware

Dell Compellent SC8000 flash-optimized storage

Dell PowerEdge R720 and R620 rack servers with Intel® Xeon®processors

Dell EqualLogic PS6100E and PS6100XV storage array

Dell PowerVault MD3660f storage array

Dell Wyse P25 zero clients

Healthcare providers face a bright future. Today, there are

more solutions than ever to deliver better, faster, and more

cost-effective patient services. Thanks to developments in

hospital information systems (HIS), providers can deliver

the right patient data to the right clinicians at the right

time. Additionally, evolutions in flash-based storage are

ensuring providers can boost the performance of their HIS

environments while staying well within their IT budgets.

“ Replication between the two sites will be automatic, almost in real time. The lag between data being written to the DR database will be just two minutes, so in the event of an outage, we can keep our patient systems up and running. This is something we couldn’t have achieved previously.” Dr. Panuratn Thanyasiri, Chief Information Officer, Samitivej Hospital

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“Although we’ve had a longstanding, successful partnership with Dell, we wanted to keep an open mind about the platform because we wanted the best solution for our TrakCare environment,” comments Dr. Thanyasiri.

Flash-optimized storage to meet the needs of healthcareStakeholders at Samitivej ultimately decided in favor of Dell PowerEdge servers given their consistent performance. For the storage to support the HIS’s main database, it essentially came down to Dell Compellent. Dr. Thanyasiri says, “It became clear that Dell Compellent could offer flash-optimized storage to meet our needs. But more than that, Dell was the only vendor that assured us it could deliver and deploy the solution within our very tight timeframe.”

A single-vendor, cost-effective platform offers added valueBesides the impending deadline, there was another factor that made it easier for Samitivej Hospital to choose Dell. Dr. Thanyasiri explains, “Through Dell Compellent, we were also standardizing on Dell and could realize the cost benefits of working with a single provider. We’ve always been happy with the performance of our Dell solutions, and particularly the post-sales support. From a technical and services perspective, the advantages of choosing Dell were obvious.”

The Samitivej IT team worked with Dell to finalize the platform design for the upgraded HIS system. Disaster recovery (DR) played a fundamental part to ensure high availability, and the Dell team helped the hospital create a redundant infrastructure with IT shared across both sites. “The plan was to replicate data between two Compellent storage arrays – one at each hospital site. This way, we could failover to the second site if any issues occurred at the primary site, which threaten system availability and access to patient data,” comments Dr. Thanyasiri.

Hospital gains flash-optimized storage at 30 percent less cost of competing solutionAccording to Dr. Thanyasiri, the cost effectiveness of the Dell Compellent storage set the solution apart. He says that as with any organization, there’s competition among departments for resources, and he appreciates that other teams within the hospital are seeking funds to meet their own programs. “I believe Dell Compellent flash-optimized storage was 30 percent more cost-effective than the equivalent solution from Dell’s competitors,” he says. “We had the resources available to purchase more costly storage from competing vendors, but it was clear that the Dell Compellent storage made greater business sense. It meant there would be resources available for other departments to use, and this was crucial.”

Highly available solution maximizes the value of HIS investmentThe finished design featured two Dell Compellent SC8000 Storage Center flash-optimized arrays – one at each hospital – to support the HIS’s main database. Alongside both storage arrays, Dell Deployment Services and the hospital installed Dell PowerEdge R720 and R620 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors to run the environment’s non-virtualized key applications. Additionally, Dell EqualLogic PS6100E and PS6100XV storage, and Dell PowerVault MD3660f storage were installed to support the system’s VMware®-based virtual applications and the PACS. “With deployment support from Dell, we managed to hit our targets and achieve the necessary level of performance to maximize the TrakCare solution,” recalls Dr. Thanyasiri.

Better patient services with flash-optimized storage Today, Samitivej Hospital is delivering improved patient care, building on the success of its previous HIS environment. With its flash-optimized storage, the hospital gets the maximum value out of its investment. Patient and hospital data is being written to the TrakCare main

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database and then read to “shadow” databases in real time and accessed by a series of clinical, administrative and department modules. It means clinicians can obtain a consolidated view of up-to-the-minute patient data to make better decisions more rapidly. In addition, executives can access reports, graphs and dashboards, which provide combined key performance indicators on clinical and administrative operations. Dr. Thanyasiri comments, “We have a powerful HIS to meet the long-term needs of the hospital, and an underlying platform whose flash-optimized Compellent storage gives us the high performance we require.”

Reduced power and cooling – achieving necessary IOPS with significantly fewer disks It’s not just Compellent’s price point that has saved the hospital important resources. The storage solution is delivering high amounts of IOPS within a small footprint – cutting power and cooling significantly. “In the past, we could achieve something like 4,000 IOPS with more than 100 disks. With the flash-optimized Dell Compellent solution we can reach up to 100,000 IOPS with sub-millisecond latency on the database and far fewer disks. Even at that impressive rate, the Dell solution consumes less energy and generates much less heat,” says Dr. Thanyasiri.

Maximized uptime with highly available platform and disaster recovery As for reliability, the hospital has no complaints. “The Dell solution supporting our HIS has been running for more than seven months without any downtime,” says Dr. Thanyasiri. Replication processes are near completion between the Compellent storage at the primary data center in Samitivej Sukhumvit and the

secondary data center at Samitivej Srinakarin, located 20 kilometers away. The sites are connected by a main 200 megabit (Mb) link and a 100Mb DR link. Dr. Thanyasiri says, “Replication between the two sites will be automatic, almost in real time. The lag between data being written to the DR database will be just two minutes, so in the event of an outage, we can keep our patient systems up and running. This is something we couldn’t have achieved previously.”

The IT team is also confident that it can maintain the performance of the Dell-based platform over time, not least with the support of Dell Compellent Copilot Support. “The minimal contact we’ve had with Copilot has been very encouraging. You’re dealing with storage experts who understand your business needs and provide a fast, efficient service,” comments Dr. Thanyasiri.

More IT time for strategic projects with hours saved each week on managementRight now, the IT team is making the most of the platform’s stability to work on other strategic IT projects around the hospitals. “IT administrators have recouped the time they once spent resolving technical issues with the previous HIS solution. We’re talking about a few hours a week that they can dedicate to working on higher value IT tasks instead of routine management. It’s good news for the hospital and particularly for the development of patient services,” Dr. Thanyasiri concludes.

Dell, the Dell logo, Dell Compellent, PowerEdge, EqualLogic, PowerVault and Wyse are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Availability and terms of Dell Software, Solutions and Services vary by region. This case study is for informational purposes only. Dell makes no warranties — express or implied — in this case study. Reference Number: 10013624 © November 2014, Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved

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“ Through Dell Compellent, we were also standardizing on Dell and could realize the cost benefits of working with a single provider. We’ve always been happy with the performance of our Dell solutions, and particularly the post-sales support. From a technical and services perspective, the advantages of choosing Dell were obvious.” Dr. Panuratn Thanyasiri, Chief Information Officer, Samitivej Hospital