IBM Delivers Cloud-Based Health Care Platform for Inland Northwest

The service uses IBM’s Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for data reporting and Tivoli Storage Manager for centralized, automated data protection.

Technology giant IBM announced that Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS), a non-profit organization in Spokane, Wash., is working to improve patient care through their cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) services delivered to physicians and medical facilities with IBM server and storage technology.

The solution, provided through IBM Business Partner Solutions-II, consists of System x3850 and x3650 systems, BladeCenter H Chassis and BladeCenter HX5 servers. For storage, the solution uses Storwize V7000 and DS8000-series storage systems, and System Storage SAN Volume Controller software, serving the core Meditech health care information system and about 400 ancillary applications.

The service also uses IBM’s Tivoli Storage Productivity Center software for data reporting and Tivoli Storage Manager for centralized, automated data protection. The company’s global financing division is providing financing services for the project, which aims to provide new levels of uptime and stability, increase business agility, offer faster user performance as well as greater operational efficiency.

"The core application we provide to our clients is a comprehensive system covering a full range of health-care activities--hospital operations, admission of patients, pharmacy orders, lab services, and patient clinical information," Chad Skidmore, director of INHS, said in a statement. "Because it covers so many critical aspects affecting patient care, we needed a cloud solution that could provide the highest quality of service, and the performance of the technology IBM is providing is just amazing."

The INHS is experiencing annual growth of 25 percent, and is rolling out new services, which has been putting strain on their existing server and storage infrastructure. In addition, INHS wanted to reduce the footprint of their data center in terms of physical space, power consumption and cooling requirements. IBM’s solution increased the amount of capacity in the data center while floor space has been reduced by 28 percent and overall power consumption has held steady, a company release stated.

"The cloud-based services INHS is providing to their clients demonstrate how our technology can help improve the quality of health-care services for doctors, medical facilities and ultimately patients," Jane Munn, vice president and business line executive for cloud at IBM’s systems and technology group, said in a statement. "Based on the performance of our System x and storage offerings for their current data center requirements, INHS is now evaluating adding PureFlex systems to their infrastructure."

The solution is also based on IBM System x servers, Storwize and DS8000 storage systems and storage area network (SAN) Volume Controller storage virtualization technology and storage software to help ensure high reliability, availability and efficiency for the EHR services INHS provides to 40 hospitals and 750 physicians in the northwest United States.