Isala Clinics, a non-academic hospital in the Netherlands, has selected the
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) solution for access to critical healthcare information, images and applications, according to the group.
Isala Clinics, which is based in Zwolle, handles more than 475,000 outpatient visits and nearly 40,000 hospitalizations each year and for smooth running of a hospital of that size staff access to healthcare applications is essential, they said.
Isala Clinics’ IT division, IC2it, decided on F5 as it suited there requirements. The hospital wanted an application delivery solution when it became clear that everything from patient waiting times to surgical operations would be impacted if healthcare-related applications became unavailable.
“Simple, proactive, and transparent functionality were the main requirements,” said Jos Minnema, system administration and operations manager at IC2it, in a statement.
Minnema said that BIG-IP LTM fulfilled these criteria, allowing automatic distribution of users across available servers in the most optimized, reliable way while simultaneously increasing the agility of the company’s IT infrastructure.
F5 officials said that the use of BIG-IP LTM would help Isala Clinics in implementing new initiatives, such as the recent X-ray picture digitization project.
“You can imagine how important the availability of radiology images is for treating our patients,” said Minnema.
He said that F5’s solution ensures that, in the event of a disaster or downtime at one of the company’s data centers, all clients will still be able to access critical applications. This means for example that, during surgery, surgeons will have continuous access to X-rays even if one of the data centers fails, he pointed out.
“Healthcare providers like Isala Clinics continually rely on web applications and data to make patient and treatment information available to qualified professionals around the globe,” said Jason Needham, sr. director of Product Management at F5.
Needham said that F5 solutions help to ensure that applications remain highly available and meet critical security compliance requirements. This means that medical data and images will be readily accessible to hospital personnel in order to make informed healthcare decisions, he added.
F5 Networks is a major player in application delivery networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications.
Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Anil’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Tim Gray
