An innovative collaboration between IBM, NoMachine and Novell is enabling a California hospital to improve the experience of its patients by delivering secure email and web access in patient rooms, while saving significant information technology maintenance and energy costs.
Glendale Adventist Medical Center (GAMC) installed personal computing stations in 65 patient rooms of its new West Tower, enabling patients to surf the Internet, research medical information about their condition, and communicate with friends and family through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. GAMC says it also plans to extend its use of virtual desktops for employee and clinical use in the future.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell is the operating system that virtualizes the 65 desktops. NoMachine, creator and global distributor of NX desktop and application delivery software, provides complete and efficient remote access. An IBM System x3650 server provides the back-end computing system, and IBM experts also advised GAMC on the project's design.
"What makes this so important is that this is the first implementation of this size and kind in the healthcare industry, the industry that has a huge need today to improve the bottom line without jeopardizing patient care," notes Inna Kuznetsova, director of IBM Linux strategy worldwide. "This particular project is a unique example of how IBM's expertise and technology can help not only to improve the total cost of ownership and running the project, but can create an incredible value in the quality of patient care."
The hospital estimates that the energy-efficient "thin client" computer monitors save 60% in electricity costs versus stand-alone PCs, and that the new desktops have saved 98% of the IT costs that would have been spent maintaining normal PCs.
In addition to enabling such important capabilities as editing pictures right in their hospital rooms, keeping in touch with friends and family, sending letters, editing documents, and researching medical information, it is essential that it allows patients to maintain their privacy, Kuznetsova emphasizes.
"This solution helps to achieve an unbelievable level of security compared to a traditional desktop implementation," Kuznetsova emphasizes. Updates and maintenance to the software can be made on a centralized server by the hospital's IT staff. "Patients' information never leaves a server. The whole desktop is deployed from a server. If a patient changes rooms, which often happens in a hospital a few days after a treatment, the patient just signs in, in a different room, and gets all the same photographs, details, documents and bookmarks back. But what is equally important is that when the patient leaves the hospital, this information is deleted at check-out."
For more information about NoMachine NX technology, go here. For more information on IBM, go here.