Silver Cross Hospital Deploys Oracle Infrastructure Software To Provide Physicians With Secure Remote Access To Critical Patient And Medical Data
Redwood Shores, CA - Oracle recently announced that Silver Cross Hospital, a Joliet, IL.- based nonprofit healthcare system, deployed a Web portal solution built on Oracle infrastructure software to provide physicians, clinicians and employees with secure, reliable and remote access to hospital applications and data. The solution enables the hospital to extend care beyond the hospital walls and into the communities it serves.
Silver Cross Hospital -- ranked as one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals by healthcare information resource Solucient -- recognizes that serving the area's population requires extending its resources into the community and clinics where physicians are working with patients and collaborating with one another. To help fulfill this objective, the hospital launched a global "anytime, anywhere" IT strategy with an Oracle-based portal at its core.
The portal solution -- which is built on Oracle(R) Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Portal and Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite -- provides physicians, clinicians and hospital employees with a reliable and secure way to access important patient and clinical information from any Web browser, regardless of their location. Now physicians and clinicians can remotely access the hospital's health information system, electronic health records, and pictures archiving and communications system (PACS), as well as its intranet and medical library.
Enabling Secure Access
One of the challenges the IT staff faced in executing the initiative was granting secure remote access to the hospital's information and applications to protect patient privacy and comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.
"Most solutions depend on special software residing on the user's computer; and VPN access often requires users to carry a cryptocard with changing passcodes," said Silver Cross Hospital Chief Information Officer Matt Ebaugh. "We wanted a remote solution that allowed access from any system and achieved that objective with Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite's Single-Sign On and Oracle Internet Directory. With Oracle, we have enabled single sign-on and can manage the end-to-end lifecycle of user identities across our enterprise resources both within and beyond the firewall."
Building a Highly Reliable Infrastructure
The system had to be highly reliable and responsive to help ensure that caregivers could rapidly access critical information needed to make decisions about patient care. Silver Cross implemented Oracle Real Application Clusters to support the deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers -- providing a high level of fault tolerance and scalability. Oracle Real Application Clusters also allows Silver Cross to add capacity quickly and cost-effectively, as needed.
In addition, Silver Cross implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g to manage and monitor all servers in its portal environment. The hospital also plans to use the management solution to monitor new applications deployed to the portal. Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g helps Silver Cross save valuable application and database administrator time by automating manual tasks, proactively sending alerts when problems begin to emerge, and providing valuable suggestions to optimize performance.
"Our IT staff now has an infrastructure that is easy to use and maintain, and the response from users has been overwhelmingly positive," said Ebaugh. "The Oracle-based portal is the cornerstone for our future technology initiatives. It has the flexibility to provide secure access to existing critical hospital applications and data and the scalability to allow us to build and deploy additional portal applications."
In March 2006, the hospital launched an employee portal that enables role-based access to applications as well as access to computer based learning (CBL) programs. Delivery of CBL via the portal helps to streamline administration and management of all educational programming. The hospital also plans to launch a patient portal, which will enable patients to check appointment schedules and research helpful health information, all through a single log-in interface.
"Electronic medical records hold tremendous potential to improve both the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare," said Bob White, Oracle Vice President of Global Health Industries. "To realize this potential, however, healthcare organizations must enable secure remote access to vital patient information. Silver Cross, a healthcare innovator, has leveraged Oracle infrastructure software to create a secure portal that helps it extend and improve the quality of care it delivers to the communities it serves."
SOURCE: Oracle