When an incident has happened, I often hear people say that it was totally unexpected. With good end-to-end monitoring, however, you can actually see malfunctions coming. In fact, you can intervene and fix the problem before a calamity occurs.
University Hospital Background
Leading scientific research, groundbreaking innovations and collaboration with patients and other stakeholders form the basis for excellent care for this internationally leading university hospital. With more than 12,000 employees, it is one of the largest public healthcare institutions in the Netherlands.
End-to-end monitoring
In the past, the university hospital used multiple solutions to monitor individual parts of the IT infrastructure. However, it became increasingly clear that insight into the entire chain was necessary to ensure the continuity of the IT infrastructure. That is why it was decided to look for a solution for end-to-end monitoring. After extensive market research and an RFP process, the eG Innovations monitoring solution was selected. This solution was the only one that met all the requirements set out in the RFP and eG Innovations also stood out in terms of flexibility and support.
"When an incident has happened, I often hear people say that it was unexpected. With good end-to-end monitoring, however, you can actually see malfunctions coming. In fact, you can intervene and fix the problem before a calamity occurs," the university hospital's head of IT Service Center & Management Support said.
Distinctive approach: end-user experience central
The pursuit of excellent care is reflected in the way in which the university hospital has set up its monitoring. Where most organizations focus exclusively on monitoring components, such as Citrix, VMware or Microsoft, this hospital goes a step further by monitoring so-called 'value chains'.
"For example, the EHR, in our case HiX, is such a value chain," explains the Product Owner Monitoring at the university hospital. "If an end-user has to wait a long time to log in, or perhaps can't log in at all, you want to know immediately where the problem is. You can only do this if you have end-to-end insight into the status of all components of the value chain."
To implement the monitoring process in this way, a topology overview was made, in collaboration with an IT architect from the university hospital and a consultant from eG Innovations. The Product Owner continues: "The moment you see how many components affect the value chain, it becomes clear how complex this entire value chain is. This is exactly where the added value of eG Innovations' end-to-end monitoring solution lies. It's extremely flexible. You can monitor almost any technology, application and (cloud) infrastructure with it. This is all standard in the solution that eG offers."
How the Hospital is Benefiting from eG Enterprise
Immediate insight into the cause of the problem
The monitoring solution of eG Innovations is not only distinguished by its flexibility and completeness, it also provides direct insight into the cause of a problem. Many monitoring solutions only show whether everything is working properly or not. The built-in root cause analysis of eG Enterprise shows exactly where the problem is.
Clear dashboards
The monitoring solution of eG Innovations includes a large number of standard dashboards and also offers the possibility to create dashboards yourself very easily. The Product Owner explains: "We have built our dashboards from three layers: firstly, a dashboard that shows the status of the IT services at a glance to the management team. The next layer shows the status of the different value chains, such as HiX or the New Workspace Environment, and the layer below shows the status of all associated components. If an incident occurs or threatens to occur somewhere, an alert will appear in the dashboard. By clicking on the underlying components each time, you immediately arrive at the root cause of the problem."
Monitoring patient portal
Now that the monitoring solution has been implemented and the most important value chains around the EHR and the New Workspace Environment are continuously monitored, it is time for the next step. "The patient is central to us. This also means, for example, that they must always have quick and easy access to the right information," says the Product Owner. "This starts with logging on to the patient portal."
University Hospital Product OwnerLessons learned
When asked what advice you would like to give others, the Product Owner replies: "In order to provide good care, employees and patients must be able to rely on the IT environment to always function and that the security of privacy-sensitive data is guaranteed. This means that you have to put the end-user first. Mark that as a dot on the horizon. And make sure it's clear to all the teams involved where you want to go. Security is an important aspect too. Replace outdated components and make sure everything is up-to-date, so that you gain transparent insight into the status of the entire chain."
About eG Innovations
In order to provide excellent patient care, it is essential to always have access to patient information and care systems, on all devices and via all applications, without interruption. The continuity of the IT environment must therefore be guaranteed, and its performance must meet the expectations of the users.
eG Enterprise, the end-to-end application and performance monitoring solution of eG Innovations, uniquely addresses healthcare IT needs.
With this solution, you can monitor both the IT environment and all the applications your organization uses from a single pane of glass, whether they are located in the virtual, cloud or physical infrastructure.
This means that you can monitor specific healthcare applications or processes end-to-end. Like the EHT, the ERP or the workplace environment. By default, eG supports 250+ applications (including all hospital information systems) and templates and tests are immediately accessible.
With eG Enterprise you have direct insight into the underlying causes of performance issues. Instead of reactively solving problems, you can proactively see disruptions coming and often fix them before the user notices. All the more so because eG Enterprise has standard integrations with ITSM tools such as TOPdesk. With fewer people and less budget, you can provide a better end-user experience to staff and patients.
