Advanced Medicine (cont.)

Staying ahead of the curve in South Florida

Complying with privacy

Compared to SOX, HIPAA requirements are more about protecting the sensitivity and privacy of data."It's about who has access to what data and being able to report on who has that access," Montgomery explains. "Something as simple as locking down our print queue to a receptionist's printer can be painful to address. Symantec Control Compliance Suite helps us manage that."

The solution is generating significant results for Baptist Health, including a reduction in preparation time for monthly security audits from an average of 12 hours to 15 minutes. "We're working with Symantec Consulting Services to add Symantec Security Information Manager. That will help us identify and respond to incidents and threats in our environment more effectively."

Touting telemedicine

Seeking to improve care delivery in its ICUs, Baptist Health implemented an eICU LifeGuard system, which uses Veritas Cluster Server for active-passive high-availability clustering, for remote ICU monitoring. The solution enables critical care doctors and nurses in a centralized monitoring location to track real-time changes in patient conditions such as whether or not their pupils are dilated. If an alarming trend is noted, the on-site doctors and nurses are alerted so they can take appropriate steps.

"The system sits on our own fiber ring with redundant paths between our major facilities," Montgomery notes. "The combination of Veritas Cluster Server and NetBackup ensures 24/7 availability."

The results of this solution are impressive. Research published in the Society of Critical Care Journal documented a 27 percent reduction in deaths and a 14 percent reduction in the length of stay in critical care with the use of electronic monitoring.

Application puzzle masters

The near-constant growth means that Montgomery and his team must be adept at repackaging applications to map to changes in the environment.

"We leverage many of the tools available in Symantec Altiris Wise Package Studio for application lifecycle management," Montgomery says. "In 2005, we changed our model from standalone development workstations to a client/server model using Altiris Wise Package Studio. This, coupled with our 300-plus page internally developed Application Repackaging Guide, allowed the Baptist Health team to develop a quality assurance initiative and a repeatable workflow."

Overall, the use of Altiris Wise Package Studio is helping the IT team to significantly reduce the number of support hours required for application testing and deployment. "We have a more stable environment that requires fewer manual installations and re-imaging of unstable workstations," explains Erik McLaughlin, corporate manager of client/server infrastructure at Baptist Health.

On one occasion last year, the solution paid for itself. "There was one instance that involved more than 1,600 workstations," McLaughlin reports. "The use of Altiris Wise Package Studio slashed US$1.2 million in support costs for our refresh of this environment."

"The Altiris Wise Package Studio solution is just another way we stay ahead of the curve," Montgomery says. "And when your-or your loved one's-life depends on it, that's just where you want Baptist Health to be."

Levi Crowe writes about business and technology for the Fortune 500 and many leading publications.