By Tisa Murdock, Product Line Manager, VMware View – Healthcare
Nestled in the lush San Joaquin Valley of California, Children’s Hospital Central California rises like a mirage from 50 acres of green meadow. It almost looks like a children’s castle with brightly colored buildings, statues of giraffes and cute animal shaped topiaries. I recently visited the hospital to interview the CIO and the Network Engineering team for a video in support of our VMware View Client for iPad announcement last week.
Being a Mother, I became choked up as I approached the hospital and at the same time grateful that -my son is healthy and- there are people and facilities dedicated to helping heal sick children. Children’s is the 2nd largest pediatric hospital in California, the 10th largest in the nation and has a long tradition of adopting technology to help improve patient care. This tradition continues with their two desktop modernization projects – Advanced Clinical Systems and CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry) both going live this summer.
The healthcare industry is going through a complete transformation with the move from pen and paper to digitized records. This transformation will change the way both hospital IT professionals and hospital caregivers look at point-of-care clinical desktops. Electronic medical records reduce medical errors, improve patient safety and produce better clinical outcomes, but if the caregiver needs to make a decision and cannot access their electronic medical record system because their clinical desktop is down – there can be serious consequences.
It has become absolutely imperative that desktops and electronic medical applications are immediately accessible and available to caregivers.
Children’s Hospital Central California is on the forefront of this industry wide transformation. They are creating clinical solutions that make the move to electronic medical records faster and less complex for their IT department. The solutions also provide caregivers with a highly available point–of-care environment that is easy to access and easy to use.
Children’s is piloting VMware View and VMware ThinApp to modernize and virtualize both their clinical desktops and medical applications. Abstracting desktop environments from PC hardware and moving them into the datacenter means that Children’s can better manage desktops and applications and deliver them as a service to their clinicians.
The virtual desktops are hosting on VMware vSphere, a key component of our VMware View solution. VMware vSphere provides unparalleled reliability with features that continually monitor, load balance and dynamically allocated resources across the virtual desktop environment. As a result, IT can now deliver a non-stop point of care desktop with all applications and data readily available to the caregiver where and when they need them.
This enables new virtual point-of-care desktops to achieve the level of availability demanded by clinicians and staff. And now Children’s can also use new devices, such as the iPad, to access their virtual point-of-care desktop.
Clinicians tell me that they love the iPad. Now with VMware View Client with iPad they can access their virtual desktop and the small form factor and long battery life makes it portable and easy to take it bedside. This means more time engaging with patients and fast order entry (via CPOE). Hospital IT professionals like it because all the data and information is being stored in the datacenter, making everything secure and compliant. In this use case the iPad acts like a thin client with no information being stored locally so there is no fear of a data breach if the device gets lost or stolen.
VMware’s mission in healthcare is to help our customers transform the cost, quality and delivery of patient care. It is great to visit customers such as Children’s Hospital Central California who are committed to not only finding the best technology to help them transform to a digital environment but are also committed to improving the day-to-day workflow of their caregivers.
