King's Daughters Medical Center (KDMC)

Success at a Glance

Medical images-X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and others-are critical tools for healthcare providers, so secure storage and quick access to them are vital. King's Daughters Medical Center (KDMC), like many healthcare institutions, had historically segmented its storage by department, treating its radiology, cardiology, and IT departments almost as though they were individual companies, with completely separate storage hardware and software.

As the hospital grew and imaging technology generated larger volumes of data, KDMC's infrastructure was strained by increased storage demands and longer times for retrieval and display of images. In addition, administration of the existing system became more complex. Managing a diverse blend of storage hardware and software from IBM, EMC, Sun and other suppliers stretched scarce IT resources thin. KDMC wanted to consolidate and reduce complexity while building in flexibility to respond to future requirements.

In 2005, KDMC decided to upgrade its picture archiving and communications system (PACS) to the Philips Medical Systems EasyAccess PACS. Simultaneously, the hospital started an organization-wide review of its storage infrastructure.

Collaborative Sale
Sun and Philips Medical Systems have collaborated for nearly a decade on PACS deployments, with Sun being the original archive supplier for EasyAccess. With this established relationship in place, the two sales teams embarked on a consultative sales process at KDMC. Technical specialists from both companies worked closely with KDMC to determine the architecture of a storage system that would unify all the hospital’s storage needs. Sun showed KDMC the benefits of an information lifecycle management (ILM) approach that could maximize storage utilization and minimize capital outlays without compromising patient care.

With the specifications in place, KDMC invited proposals from multiple suppliers, including Sun. As a not-for-profit institution, price was an important factor in the hospital’s decision, so KDMC required competing suppliers to project the costs of expanding the system from the current 32 TB to 100 TB over a five-year period. While the initial capital investment in the Sun StorageTek solution was comparable to competing systems, Sun’s projected long-term costs were $400,000 less than the nearest competitor, giving Sun the advantage on total capital outlay.

KDMC also responded positively to the close working relationship between Sun and Philips Medical, especially the concept of a single point of contact. The hospital realized that this partnership would contribute to rapid deployment—essential given the mandate to be operational by January 1, 2006—and collaborative problem resolution, with no fingerpointing between the two vendors. Based on the Sun-Philips Medical relationship and the greater value of the Sun offering over time, KDMC awarded the contract to Sun.

Sun delivered the storage components in early November 2005, less than two months ahead of the go-live date. Because the implementation time frame left no room for a separate design phase, many of the details of the combined EasyAccess and ILM solution had to be worked out on the fly. Sun and Philips Medical worked closely, virtually around the clock, to bring the system online and manage the transition to the new infrastructure with the least possible disruption to operations.

Faster Image Display, Simplified Administration
The centerpiece of the storage infrastructure is a 4-gigabyte (GB) Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN). Based on Brocade switches and Sun arrays, the new SAN is showing impressive results. In benchmark tests, the time to decompress and display a 30 GB X-ray image has dropped from 10 seconds to 3.5, almost a threefold improvement. The faster SAN also decreases the time to back up the image database by 80 percent.

The Sun StorageTek SAM-FS software provides a central point for administering the Sun storage subsystem. SAM-FS drives the ILM process, moving data between the FlexLine arrays and to the SL500 library automatically, based on polices set by KDMC’s IT staff. Thanks to ILM, the hospital is maximizing its investment in storage infrastructure and ensuring compliance with HIPAA and other regulations.

The Sun-Philips Medical partnership also benefits KDMC on the support side. Sun has invested in training Philips Medical staff on the Sun products, so Philips Medical can serve as a single point of contact for all support-related issues. The Philips Medical team escalates issues to the Sun support staff as required, for quick prioritization and resolution.

Healthcare is ultimately about people, not technology, and that’s exactly where the Sun-Philips Medical solution is paying off for KDMC. Care providers can access medical images quickly and reliably, contributing to more accurate diagnoses and more successful outcomes. IT staff spend less time on routine storage administration and more time on forward-looking projects that benefit the hospital’s patients as well as its bottom line. In the continuing fight against life-threatening diseases, the Sun-Philips Medical partnership forms one of KDMC’s most potent weapons.