Hospital Jihlava frees six months of medical staff’s time, enhancing patient-centric care with Azure

Hospital Jihlava is a health facility that provides specialized care across many fields to the 500,000 residents in its region in the Czech Republic. “We strive to simplify work for doctors and nurses,” says David Zažímal, Deputy Director for Informatics and Cybersecurity at Hospital Jihlava. “Being effective in our work enables medical staff to provide better patient care.”

The hospital adopted a range of Microsoft tools to enhance patient-facing operations and unburden personnel from manual processes. “We wanted to improve our infrastructure, digitize processes, and strengthen internal communication. Microsoft 365 offered us an agile ecosystem that incorporated many applications as well as the scalability to grow for the future,” says Jiří Schimmer, Head of Cloud and Infrastructure Department at Hospital Jihlava.

Smoother experience for doctors and nurses

Working with Microsoft, the hospital adopted Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Forms, and Microsoft Defender security apps to build business resilience. “During the first COVID-19 wave, we shut down many services overnight,” says Zažímal. “We had to start communicating remotely with our colleagues and patients. Microsoft Teams enabled us to do that—within a few days, we could carry out all meetings, including crisis sessions, online.”

The increased communication also urged the need for modern, lightweight mobile devices that medical teams could use to record notes, keep abreast with current updates, and manage schedules on the move. “We opted for Microsoft Surface Go devices connected to our hospital information system and Microsoft 365,” Zažímal describes. With data at their fingertips, nurses can create health documentation at patients’ bedside, while doctors no longer need to carry a bulk of patient scans and test results on their rounds.

All of the implemented solutions meet strict data security and protection requirements. "Our Surface Go devices work with touchless authentication cards to enable multi-factor verification on workstations," continues Zažímal. "And with Azure AD proxy, our staff can run applications securely from home." Now, most of the 1,600 staff members use Teams as the primary communication channel instead of email. “We can form various work groups on Teams. It means we can work together on one platform and that has made things more systematic,” says Zažímal.

In addition, right before the COVID-19 outbreak, the hospital started using Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). Since then, the usage has almost doubled. “Recently, we rebuilt the AVD infrastructure and created new Windows 11 machines with the Performance Tier storage, which made the virtual machines super-fast," says Schimmer. “The next feature we are currently working on are Azure Storage accounts. We started sending data from the surveillance system and backups from our on premise infrastructure. From what our first trials of this solution can tell, Azure seems very suitable for our use cases.”

Saving lives through quicker responses

The change has also helped reduce waiting time for patients. With Microsoft Forms, people can now extend their sick note online instead of coming into the hospital. "Previously, patients had to wait at the emergency department for up to five hours to get their extension,” explains Schimmer. “With Microsoft Forms, they can do everything online at home.” Having digital forms available has also decreased the number of calls inquiring about sick note extensions by 30 percent. The upgraded process has helped the emergency department save more than 1,800 hours in nine months.

Additionally, the hospital staff now relies on online patient triage with Microsoft Forms to speed up care. “We’ve built a system where COVID-19 patients can pre-fill information on the web before their visit. An automated mobile notification is sent from Azure Logic Apps to patients with information about their hospital appointment,” says Zažímal. “More than 80,000 forms have been filled in three months, which translates to 2,666 hours saved due to increased efficiency.”

Using a simple solution built on Power Apps, the hospital has processed and stored more than 9,125 files, saving medical staff 700 hours in accessing and updating medical documentation. In many cases, the digitally-based system can save lives. “Emergency services can quickly send electrocardiogram recordings from the ambulance using SharePoint Online,” Zažímal shares. “It's linked to a text message—a telephone beeps, and the staff at the intensive care unit know a new patient is coming, which allows them to react quickly."

Transforming healthcare with AI

More exciting projects are underway, including a pilot solution for patient monitoring using Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. With this innovation, a sensor-studded mattress sends signals to an AI module to detect when a patient has left their bed or notify nurses when to re-position a bed-ridden patient to prevent bedsores.

"I thought digital transformation was just a buzzword," concludes Zažímal. "But now, I understand that it means we can build on our foundations to simplify work for our healthcare professionals as well as effectively care for patients."