Launch issues still plague Macquarie Uni Hospital IT

Enabling research services manager Kevin Koelmeyer, hired by Harders along with three other IT managers last May, described early 2010 as a "murky era" for the hospital.

Lot of those [decisions]

"We're revisiting a lot of those [decisions]," he said at the Chilli IQ Research in Health Administration Conference today.

Koelmeyer said the team faced "bad and ugly" challenges in administering the hospital's 200 distinct networks, 76 applications and more than 300 thick customers established since the hospital began construction in 2009.

IT staff managed 160 virtual servers deployed on disparate platforms, including Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Centos.

The 64-bit version of Windows 7

Though desktops were at first equipped with the 64-bit version of Windows 7, few clinical applications supported the newer operating system, forcing IT staff to re-configure systems to run on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 instead.

Although the hospital had some 600 kilometres of Cat 7 networking cable, at 1 Gbps bandwidth to the desktop, end points were only equipped for Cat 5 and Cat 6.

Its two on-site data centres contained HP blade servers that were 99 percent virtualised, using HP iSCSI and fibre-channel storage area network research.

A facility-wide wi-fi network with more than 160 access points provided additional connectivity for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, drug dosage and AeroScout asset tracking systems.

Within two months, personal video conferencing would as well be enabled on Siemens HiMed patient entertainment units that as well served internet access, television, and clinical records.

Staff, patients and their visitors used smartcards to pay for meals and services and staff kept track of their work hours using biometric human resources research by Kronos.

The team currently faced ten projects

The team currently faced ten projects, including systems integration, an e-learning implementation and improvements in remote access for clinicians via Citrix virtual desktop innovation.