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Project Log
MetaFrame helps Apollo streamline its HIS
 Citrix
Metaframe Presentation Server has streamlined the Hospital Information System
running at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi, says R Srinivasan, the hospital’s
head of IT
INDRAPRASTHA Apollo Hospital in Delhi is part of a large chain of hospitals
spread across the country, and is the largest corporate hospital outside the
United States. Set up jointly with the government of New Delhi, it is the third
super-speciality tertiary care hospital set up by the Apollo Group. The hospital
has 695 beds with the provision for expansion to 1,000 beds in the future. Being
at the forefront of medical technology and expertise, it provides a complete
range of the latest diagnostic, medical and surgical facilities for patient
care.
The need for CMPS
We had been running the Hospital Information System (HIS)
provided by Wipro since March 2002; it was customised to meet our requirements.
But the legacy systems which we had—Celeron, Pentium I and Pentium II—were
not giving us the output needed by the memory-hungry HIS. We wanted to maximise
output from our legacy systems without investing in new hardware and systems.
At the same time, managing the HIS was not an easy task and was slipping from
our hands. We have around 30 users connected to the HIS, and making minor changes
or rectifying errors meant that we had to personally go to each client PC and
rectify the problem.
We have a huge six-storey building, and the HIS users are located on different
floors. It was becoming tedious and time-consuming for our team members to attend
to each individual, hence we wanted ease of manageability while running our
HIS centrally.
Taking a cue
We saw a live demo of CMPS running successfully at a service
organisation. Pleased with it, we took a lead from them and chalked out a strategy
for having a similar set-up. We ran pilots on the CMPS for 30 days and found
it well-suited to meet our challenges. Additionally, we had full faith in Citrix’s
R&D expertise, which goes into the development of the product.
The process of implementing CMPS began in early 2003, and went live in one week’s
time. Two people each from Citrix and our hospital were involved in the exercise.
Citrix also trained two of our staff members on CMPS.
Goodies
Once the implementation was done, results started flowing in. We saw that the
software was able to solve the problems we were facing. We were also able to
save our investments made in legacy machines such as Celeron, Pentium I and
Pentium II as the performance of these machines was now equivalent to that of
a Pentium 4. They now provide all the output required for the HIS. The CMPS
has also helped us save on manpower costs as it has facilitated centralised
management of the complete HIS across the building. Fewer people can now monitor
the HIS from a single location. Through the CMPS I can shadow a user’s
screen while sitting at the datacentre, and check the error message a user is
seeing; I don’t need to physically go to each and every machine to rectify
problems.
Securing CMPS
To manage the CMPS we use the management console provided by Citrix. The console
helps us shadow HIS users, in load balancing, and for printer management. For
security we have a user password which makes it mandatory for every user to
log in to get access to the CMPS. Since we are running the CMPS only on the
Local Area Network, we did not feel the need to install a firewall and intrusion
detection system for securing the server.
Today I am a satisfied person. My work has become easier
and there is flexibility in the management of the HIS. The success of CMPS has
given us the confidence to add new modules to HIS without getting bogged down
by manageability issues.
| Before Implementation |
After Implementation |
| Managing and supporting HIS on each client machine
was a difficult task. Upgrades were a cumbersome process. |
Any update to the HIS is done on the server running
CMPS. When a user faces a problem, the IT team sitting at a central location
shadows the remote user’s screen and rectifies the problem. |
| HIS is a memory hog and the required
throughput was not possible using the existing hardware—Celeron, Pentium
I and Pentium II.HIS is a memory hog and the required |
Since the HIS is running on the CMPS,
only a dummy terminal is given to the remote user. Apollo has been able
to protect its investments in its existing hardware. |
| Hardware |
Compaq Proliant ML 370 G3 dual processor servers |
| Operating System |
Microsoft Windows 2000 |
| Database |
Microsoft SQL Server |
As told to Abhinav Singh
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