Optimizing Health ICT Infrastructure
Healthcare provider and public health and social services (PHSS) organizations face relentless pressure to provide better and safer care and services to more patients and citizens at a lower cost. To be a strategic partner to the health organization they serve, information and communications technology (ICT) departments need to provide a technology foundation that can help address this challenge.
To optimize the ICT infrastructure to best meet the needs of their health organization, ICT departments need to enable disparate systems, data, processes, and devices as well as people to work together more efficiently within and beyond their organization. This will help improve information management and communication. Infrastructure software and services from Microsoft and its partners provided by the Microsoft Connected Health Platform (CHP) can help ICT departments not only enable these capabilities but do so in a way that helps reduce complexity and cost, increases the ability to respond to changing user needs, and helps ensure sensitive data is handled in accordance with industry regulations.
The Microsoft Connected Health Platform (CHP) is the implementation of the Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint (CHF) on the Microsoft platform. The CHF provides a collection of vendor-agnostic best practices and guidelines for building service- and standards-based, interoperable e-Health scenarios that are integrated, highly secure, flexible, and scalable and support the full continuum of care to meet the needs of patients and citizens, health professionals and organizations.
Based on the extensible and agile principles of the CHF, Microsoft CHP provides offerings for optimizing health ICT infrastructures, including tools, solution accelerators, and prescriptive architecture, design, and deployment guidance. The Microsoft CHP is primarily built on a foundation of generic Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization (IO) models and tools around core infrastructure, application platform, and information management that have been specialized for health. For example, to help address health organizations’ information management challenges, CHP provides the foundation for capabilities such as enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise search, communication and collaboration tools, and business intelligence (BI). In other words, the CHP is designed to provide the optimal technology foundation for e-health scenarios that help address health organizations’ most pressing challenges and enable better, more efficient care.
With the Microsoft CHP and its offerings for Optimized Desktops and Devices, Optimized Server and Datacenter, Security and Compliance, and Health Integration and Interoperability, ICT departments in healthcare provider and PHSS organizations can:
- Build an efficient, connected infrastructure. Integrated and interoperable technologies with familiar tools, automated processes, and virtualization capabilities simplify and improve ICT infrastructure management, saving ICT staff time and helping to ensure the most efficient use of ICT resources. These technologies allow different systems, processes and devices to interoperate and exchange data. This provides the foundation for aggregating data and streamlining processes so health professionals and patients and citizens can efficiently access an integrated view of information and collaborate across the health ecosystem to improve care and health outcomes.
- Improve service levels for users. Open and extensible physical and virtualization technologies that are highly adaptable and provide easy-to-use interfaces allow changing organizational and user needs – whether staff, or patients or citizens – to be quickly and easily met and can support workforce mobility. In addition, tools for efficiently and proactively managing across the entire ICT infrastructure enable any potential problems to be detected and quickly addressed to help increase availability. This provides the foundation for helping to ensure health professionals and patients and citizens can access tools and information when, where and how they need them.
- Increase security and compliance. Integrated protection, access, and management technologies, all built around user identity interoperate and extend across the entire ICT infrastructure to help manage privacy and security risks. These technologies help protect sensitive data and improve compliance with industry regulations. This provides the foundation to enable health professionals and patients and citizens to access information from various locations and while on the go with the appropriate security and protection features in place to help safeguard patient, health and organizational data.
Microsoft Connected Health Platform offerings—Optimized Desktops and Devices, Optimized Server and Datacenter, Security and Compliance, and Health Integration and Interoperability—enable healthcare provider and PHSS organizations to streamline and transform processes. They leverage existing ICT investments and make data in previously disconnected systems, and information within and across organizations, more easily accessible so people can collaborate across the health ecosystem to securely share, analyze, and use information to improve operational efficiencies and enable better individual and public health outcomes.
Optimized Desktops and Devices
The Optimized Desktops and Devices offering helps healthcare provider and PHSS organizations attain the right balance in their desktops and devices infrastructure—empowering health professionals, health partners, and citizens/patients with the mobility and flexibility they need to be productive, while providing ICT professionals with the level of control, manageability, and security features they need. The offering provides a seamless anywhere experience, simplified application management, and effective support for users while lowering ICT costs. It also helps healthcare provider and PHSS organizations manage ICT and information security risks by enabling compliance with internal policies and government regulations and helps protect desktop and device resources.
Benefits from implementing an Optimised Desktop solution include
- be more Empower users and increase productivity. Provide health professionals, caseworkers, and administrators with efficient and security-enhanced access to information, applications and people from virtually anywhere. This enables mobile health professionals to productive and provide citizen/patient-centric care where and when needed. It also helps patients and citizens more easily get the information they need – whether from their desktop or via one of their mobile devices – to make timely health and care decisions.
- Enhance security and control. With centralized management of desktops and devices, better manage security and privacy risks by being able to more consistently enforce compliance with industry regulations and organizational policies and through improved control and auditing of data and application access.
- Simplify application and resource management. A single view across physical and virtual environments, desktops and devices, and across the applications and services deployed on them allows ICT professionals to more proactively and efficiently plan, deploy, secure, and manage across the complete ICT infrastructure. Common and familiar tools for deploying, configuring, monitoring and reporting across different environments simplifies running a complex system and keeping it up to date.
CHP Guidance, Tools and Solution Accelerators:
Optimized Server and Data Center
The Microsoft Optimized Server and Datacenter offering provides the foundation for more efficient, reliable, and secure infrastructure and communication services that can better align with ever-changing organizational and citizen/patient needs. It provides a scalable and reliable platform, unified physical and virtual and end-to-end management, and security-enhanced access virtually anywhere.
Benefits from implementing an Optimised Server or Data Centre include
Improve and efficiently scale service delivery. Make service delivery more automated, predictable, and extensible with a scalable and reliable platform and efficient, end-to-end service management. Capabilities such as virtualization provide the agility to respond more quickly to new and evolving user and organizational needs, while driving down hardware and facilities costs. A stable and controlled environment for business-critical applications helps ensure continuity of service for users. In addition, consolidated management tools allow for easy data backup and redundant infrastructure and replication, reducing the impact of a disaster on the organization.
Streamline with end-to-end management. Efficiently manage across the length of the service lifecycle. A common set of tools to manage across physical and virtual environments simplifies deploying and running virtual environments and allows healthcare provider and PHSS organizations to consolidate the ICT infrastructure for lower cost. An extensible and interoperable platform enables management from the desktop to the datacenter. It also provides the ability to monitor and manage systems at main and branch locations from a central location. Such unified management capabilities improve control over the ICT infrastructure and enable better agility in responding to service needs, while reducing costs.
CHP Guidance, Tools and Solution Accelerators:
Security and Compliance
The Microsoft Security and Compliance offering encompasses protection features, access, and management, all built around user identity and integrated with a security-enhanced, interoperable platform. It helps ICT managers in healthcare provider and PHSS organizations maintain internal and external standards by staying current with organizational security technologies, compliance policies, and health-industry regulatory requirements.
Benefits from deploying a solution to improve security and compliance include
- Increase protection for security-enhanced access from virtually anywhere. A comprehensive, user-centric approach helps protect by providing in-depth defense across multiple layers, while providing security-enhanced, identity-based access for the mobile workforce as well as patients and citizens. Protection features and access are delivered within the context of a user’s identity and scale seamlessly across the technology landscape, including virtual and cloud-based environments. Combined with encryption, certification, and authentication, this enables support of a consent-based model with better control of access to confidential data, documents and care records. As a result, the right information is given to the right person and health, patient and organizational data is better safeguarded.
- Integrate and extend security features across the enterprise. Security features are built into the infrastructure and works across multiple platforms and environments. Integration across the stack helps enhance value from existing investments by broadening how they can be used to meet organizational and user needs. Microsoft security technologies are designed to integrate across the software stack - platform, scenarios for key applications and workloads, and management. This interoperable and integrated security-enhanced platform helps ICT professionals stay current with organizational security technologies, compliance policies, and health-industry regulatory requirements.
- Simplify the security experience, manage compliance. Simplify the security experience for all users that “interact” with security and help manage costs, complexity and compliance. Simplify deployment, centrally manage and deliver more contextual and user-centric security features aligned to the needs of health professionals and patients and citizens. Built-in security technologies across the entire ICT infrastructure enable more consistent enforcement of compliance with industry regulations and corporate policies and improved control and auditing of data and application access.
CHP Guidance, Tools and Solution Accelerators:
Health Integration and Interoperability
The Microsoft Health Integration and Interoperability offering enables disparate systems and processes to work together and exchange information, allowing data to be integrated and reducing ICT complexity and operational costs. This provides the foundation for empowering health professionals, patients and citizens to efficiently access and share aggregated, relevant information, and communicate and collaborate across the health ecosystem for improved, connected care.
The Microsoft Health Integration and Interoperability offering helps healthcare provider and PHSS organizations connect data, systems and processes to help reduce complexity and operational costs and enable connected care.
Benefits from deploying a Integration and Interoperability solution include
- Reduce complexity and operational costs. Integrated and interoperable technologies and processes simplify the infrastructure and enable both new and existing ICT investments to be integrated cost-effectively. Deep integration across platform technologies, applications, security, management and developer tools helps reduce complexity and operational costs. Easy-to-use utilities and tools simplify management across the complete ICT infrastructure. Tools enable a single view across physical and virtual environments, desktop and datacenter infrastructures, and across the application and services deployed on them.
- Integrate data from different systems and processes. Automate, synchronize and integrate data from different systems and processes. Integrated and interoperable technologies enable disparate systems and processes within and across health organizations to work together and exchange data. This free flow of information empowers health professionals and patients/citizens to get a complete, integrated view of information via the tools, applications and devices they use daily to improve care and health decisions.
Enable connected care. Help ensure that health ICT infrastructures and processes are interoperable, flexible, extensible, and based on industry standards so care teams can communicate, share information and work together across the health ecosystem for improved care coordination across the care continuum. Enable communication and interoperability across applications and simplify and speed the process to more securely disseminate information. Automate business and clinical processes and create workflows to help health professionals work more efficiently and provide improved care.
CHP Guidance, Tools and Solution Accelerators: