Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women's Health Education and Research Hospital

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The Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women’s Health Education and Research Hospital (ZTB) is proud of its reputation as one of the finest providers of obstetrics and gynecology services in Turkey. But its aging client-server computer platform couldn’t keep up with increasing record-keeping demands, including patient admissions, back-office operations and reporting outcomes to the Turkish government and researchers.

“Availability of the statistical data and the reports that we need to run regularly are very important to us, because if you can’t control hospital operations, especially costs and revenues, there is no possibility of creating an effective revenue model,” says Dr. Ilker Sabuncuoglu, who leads IT efforts at ZTB. “And statistical analysis depends on server performance and availability. A system that can’t give query results until the next morning has no use at all, because we need data instantly.”

In 2006 ZTB decided to replace its old client-server applications with Sarus, a unified, Web-based suite of hospital management and billing software from Sun Solution Partner EES (Entegre Enformasyon Sistemleri), which handled the implementation as well. Sun was on the short list of hardware platform vendors because its devices are widely used in universities and hospitals throughout Turkey, it supports ZTB’s chosen Microsoft operating systems and databases, and its products offer a superior cost/performance ratio.

“Sun also had the fastest response times to our questions,” he adds. “Technical support is crucial for us, and sometimes it can be hard to get in touch with the right person at a vendor’s helpdesk. But this wasn’t the case with Sun. Its support team addressed our technical questions immediately.”

The hospital decided to build its new IT infrastructure on two clustered Sun Fire X4600 servers, each equipped with four dual-core AMD Opteron CPUs, and 80 Sun Ultra 20 M2 workstations. A Sun StorageTek 6140 storage array is used to store patient files such as streaming ultrasound videos, ECG images and sound records. While the 6140 storage array uses fiber channel hard disks with fast access times, ZTB will be able to use low-cost SATA disks in the same storage unit to archive aged data.

“Our new system runs at incredible speeds,” Sabuncuoglu marvels. “It has reduced query times from up to 45 minutes down to just 1.5 minutes. For us, this is an incredible gain in speed and efficiency, particularly when you consider that a query can involve millions of data records.” A SunSpectrum support agreement is in place to help ensure system availability.

The Sarus system, which went live in May 2007, provides the hospital staff with the reports it requires, such as patient numbers by department, admission times, monthly supply levels and price changes.

The hospital also appreciates the Sun platform’s flexibility, as it looks ahead to continued growth in patient beds and services. A server normally becomes outmoded within five years, Sabuncuoglu notes. But Sun servers can be expanded by adding or upgrading CPUs. Likewise, the Sun StorageTek array is both vertically and horizontally scalable. “Practically, it’s the same as buying a new system, but costs as little as one-third as much,” he adds. “We’re confident our Sun platform will keep expanding with us, while helping to keep our expenses down.”