4-page Case Study - Posted 9/15/2006

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St. Olavs Hospital

Norwegian Hospital Saves 500 Person-Years in Costs with Wireless Messaging Solution

Health authorities in Trondheim, Norway, wanted to create the best modern hospital in northern Europe. To achieve this, they chose to support the structural building work of the new St. Olavs Hospital with a single, converged Internet Protocol network that improves productivity, decreases operating costs, and enhances the potential for application and service integration. The consortium for the new IT systems includes the Norwegian Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Computer Aided Research, Development, Instrumentation and Control (CARDIAC). This organisation is using Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, to provide immediate access to patient information. St. Olavs Hospital production is expected to increase by 26 per cent by 2015, with only a 10 per cent increase in headcount. This increased efficiency represents a saving of 500 person years.

Situation

St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway, has 950 beds, employs 8,000 people, and treats 413,000 patients a year. It is aiming to become the most technologically advanced hospital in northern Europe by 2014.

A key focus for becoming a patient-centric hospital is the deployment of the latest information and communication technology. St. Olavs, for example, is using a single, converged Internet Protocol (IP) network to improve productivity, decrease operating costs, and enhance the potential for application and service integration. In this new university hospital, patient care, research, and teaching the next generation of medical practitioners, are integrated functions.

The first of six clinical centres is scheduled for completion in 2006, and the entire hospital will be ready to treat patients by 2015. More than 85 per cent of the existing hospital is being replaced, but continuity of services has to be maintained during the rebuild. The key to the successful integration of state-of-the-art IT services and applications is a wireless-based network infrastructure.

Tore Indreråk, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Manager, St. Olavs Hospital, says: “This infrastructure is the most technologically advanced for a hospital in Europe. It will form the basis for entirely new treatment methods, increased efficiencies, and better patient care. The wireless network will give us patient information any time, and from any location, along with communication systems, alarms, and calls.”

Telenor of Norway, HP, and Cisco, are all members of a consortium that is working together on the St Olavs U.S.$100 million technology infrastructure. Computer Aided Research, Development, Instrumentation and Control (CARDIAC), a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner in Norway, is responsible for streamlining the professional and patient information needs. The CARDIAC product—Integrated Modular Administrative Technical Information System (IMATIS)—will be responsible for routing information packets to the relevant receivers and providing immediate access to patient and system information for authorised hospital employees.

Christian Rambech Dahl, Vice President of Marketing and Development Engineering at CARDIAC, says: “Messages will then be displayed and configured for output on work stations, laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), IP phones, and other mobile devices. CARDIAC has extensive experience with data retrieval from sources such as laboratory instruments and production equipment. IMATIS is the foundation and framework for our project solutions.”

Solution

CARDIAC responded with enthusiasm to St. Olavs Hospital’s specification that all IT systems and applications should run on the IP network. Employees, nurses, and patients now receive an IP phone, PDA, laptop, or patient terminal. A core of Web services has been produced, making it possible for portals on the various units to retrieve the required data.

IMATIS can do much more than just transfer alarms and messages. With an integration layer based on the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 integration engine, Web services retrieve patient journals from the medical applications on the doctor’s or nurse’s computer or mobile device. The system is used by up to 7,500 users and also manages terminals where patients can choose entertainment, access the Internet or even control the lighting in their rooms.

IMATIS is totally integrated with Microsoft products and connects Microsoft Office System applications within the hospital portal. Microsoft Internet Explorer is used as the hospital’s Web browser interface.

• IMATIS builds on a service-oriented architecture that comprises:
• Integration server, Web server, portal server, and application server.
• Messaging server. 
• The Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 enterprise operating system.
• The BizTalk Server 2004 integration engine.
• The Microsoft .NET Framework development environment.
• Cisco Call Manager and National Instruments’ LabVIEW, which includes the Citadel real-time database.
• The Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database.

The infrastructure comprises three servers clustered with Microsoft Windows® Compute Cluster Server 2003 for high performance computing. SQL Server 2000 is fully clustered with BizTalk Server 2004. The hospital’s IMATIS Server is clustered partly through Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and partly through inbuilt redundancy across individual services. IMATIS retrieves data from a disparate range of sources, processes them through the integration layer using specified rules, and distributes messages and information through the portal to various client devices. IMATIS also includes location-based services—position tools—from Cisco. These allow users to locate any wireless device in real time within a range of five to 15 metres, depending on the structure of the building.

In addition to supplying IMATIS as a system, CARDIAC offers customised modules. The environment is also open to third-party developers through IMATIS Developer Suite.

Benefits

Hospitals across Europe are facing the need to cut costs, increase efficiency, and become more accountable to the public. Microsoft technologies deployed in the IMATIS solution are helping St. Olavs hospital in Norway to achieve these goals. They are also allowing the organisation to deliver better patient care through improved communication

We are building a hospital technology infrastructure that unlocks the benefits of enhanced communication. Arve-Olav Solumsmo Public Relations Manager St. Olavs Hospital

Administrators Aim to Save 500 Person-Years in Costs
The IMATIS solution from CARDIAC is helping  St. Olavs reduce its operating costs. It is doing this by supporting new working processes in the hospital, improving the mobility of employees, and ensuring better collaboration between patients and their carers.

Arve-Olav Solumsmo, Public Relations Manager, St. Olavs Hospital, says: “We are building a hospital technology infrastructure that unlocks the benefits of enhanced communication.”

Doctors and Clinicians Communicate Directly with Patients
The IMATIS message server is based on BizTalk Server 2004 and LabVIEW. It helps doctors and clinicians exchange voice, dictation, e-mail messages, short message service (SMS) messages, and other message types using computers, mobile devices, and IP phones.

Patient information reaches clinical staff quickly and unobtrusively. Rambech Dahl says: “An alarm from a patient-monitoring device can now be routed to the nearest doctor in the most suitable format—as an SMS message to a mobile phone, as text to an IP phone, or as a spoken message to a telephone without a display.”

Transparent Message Flow
Messages from hospital building systems, such as automatic transport robots, also flow into the IMATIS platform and are seamlessly transformed to relevant members of staff. In this way, requests to open doors, call elevators, or alert nurses that this day's supply of clean clothes has arrived, can be delivered quickly and conveniently. A message from the lab system that new test results are available can now be delivered as an e-mail or phone message.

Direct Alerts Help Nurses Monitor Patient Needs
A major part of the IMATIS project focuses on Nurse Call—a patient monitoring application that means nurses can receive direct alerts on their patients’ status on any mobile device or workstation. Nurses and other clinicians can also communicate directly with their patients and colleagues, no matter where they are on the hospital campus. Indreråk says: “Even if a patient is shifted to another ward or hospital, nurses will no longer require verbal updates on the patient’s condition, but can simply check the records on their mobile devices.”

Fulfils Vision of End-to-End Digital Hospital for Patients
The IMATIS project will help fulfil St. Olavs Hospital’s goal to become one of the most technologically advanced hospitals in Europe. Ola Bergslien, Medical Director, St. Olavs Hospital, says: “Necessary patient information is available anywhere, any time. The wireless network will give us patient information, where and when required, along with communications systems, alarms, and calls. It will make life a lot easier for us, compared to the days when we had to run to telephones to respond to emergency calls.”

Improves Standards of Patient Care
The resilient and responsive, single, converged IP network ensures 99.999 per cent uptime for hospital IT services and is already reducing the potential for human error in the process of caring for patients.

Patients will be safer because information is immediately accessible to their carers. Bergslien says: “All employees will be able to log on any time, anywhere—in corridors or wards—and retrieve relevant information for a given patient.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about CARDIAC products and services, visit the Web site at:
 http://www.cardiac.no/
 
For more information about St. Olavs Hospital products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.stolav.no/stolav/

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