In retrospect, it was actually a pity that we started so small. The issues we had to deal with were caused by different elements. If we had started the full implementation immediately, we would have had a full picture of these causes even faster and could have remedied them even earlier.
The Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) is a university hospital in Nijmegen. The hospital works closely with Radboud University and is part of the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers. Radboudumc offers patients top clinical and top-referent care. In addition, it plays an important role in increasing and disseminating knowledge and expertise. Radboudumc aims to have a significant impact on healthcare. The hospital is therefore continuously focused on innovation, in all facets of healthcare. An important part of this is the development and use of new technologies and methods to make patient care better, more sustainable, more efficient and more person-oriented. The role of IT is increasingly important in this and the continuity of the IT environment is therefore essential.
Workplace monitoring
'The workplace is of paramount importance in the entire primary care process. Good patient care stands or falls with the availability of the employees workplace', says Rolf van den Boom, Technical Manager Team Workplace at Radboudumc.
When the hospital started migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 some time ago, it was fundamental to make sure that everything would function properly. This was one of the reasons to start with continuously monitoring of the entire workplace chain, end-to-end.
End-to-end insight into workplace environment
In the past, Radboudumc only used Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor the workplaces. However, this gave limited insight into the status of the workplace chain.
That is why a Proof of Concept was started in which the monitoring solution of eG Innovations - eG Enterprise - was integrated into Microsoft SCOM by means of the eG SCOM plug-in. It soon became clear that eG Innovations' monitoring solution provides comprehensive and complete insight into the status of the entire workplace chain, from user to server and everything in between.
End-to-end monitoring topology VMware Horizon
Deeper insight, extra information
With the monitoring solution from eG Innovations, problems can be quickly identified and proactively resolved before the end user notices. Also, for example with updates and upgrades, it is easy to find out why an application has suddenly become much slower than before.
Rolf van den Boom continues: 'At the system level, we can now look back in time to the moment when a user experiences problems. You can then see the changes at exactly that moment and look for the cause from there.'
Collaboration with Service Desk
The monitoring solution of eG Innovations is distinguished by its completeness and the many options that are built in as standard, such as the right metrics and the right alarms.
Thanks to the in-depth insight into the status of the chain, other useful information often becomes visible. Sebastian Jongbloed, Service Desk employee at Radboudumc, explains: 'At the service desk we get for example often lock-out notifications. The monitoring software of eG Innovations can read security logs from Active Directory, making it visible which system is causing the lock-out.'
Dashboards
The large number of standard dashboards and reports, which can also be easily adjusted, also offers great added value. Ronald van Beekveld, IT Consultant at Radboudumc adds: 'At Radboudumc we use the eG monitoring dashboard function to give us insight into the status of the components of our IT environment. This gives us the necessary information in one overview during the daily monitoring of our systems. But also during ongoing projects, such as measuring the file server performance during a profile migration.'
User experience overview report
Excellent support
Prior to the implementation, a Proof of Concept was started. 'In retrospect, it was actually a pity that we started so small', says Rolf. 'The issues we had to deal with were caused by different elements. If we had started the full implementation immediately, we would have had a full picture of these causes even faster and could have remedied them even earlier.'
Lessons learned
The monitoring solution was implemented in close collaboration with the specialists of eG Innovations. When asked what you would like to give others, Rolf replies: 'Actually, we haven't encountered many issues. However, it is important to take into account the size of the database when sizing the hardware for the eG Manager. This depends, among other things, on the retention period of the data.
In addition, we first purchased the solution as a managed service via an external party, but ultimately decided to switch to an on-premises solution. This is hosted in our own data center and in this way we have control over it ourselves and we are assured that the software is always up-to-date.'
End-to-end monitoring solution = basis for the future
Now that the monitoring of the workplace environment is functioning satisfactorily, the solution is gradually being expanded. The solution is namely suitable for every desktop, every application and every (cloud) infrastructure. Radboud now also monitors various web portals through synthetic tests and simulations. In addition, Microsoft Azure, Active Directory, Office 365, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and various Microsoft Windows & SQL Clusters have been added to eG Enterprise, to benefit from the deep insights offered in these areas as well.
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 500+ applications and infrastructure components (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.