Case Study: Healthcare Software Systems

Case Study: Healthcare Software Systems
Leading provider of RIS to the healthcare industry puts its trust in 2ndQuadrant
Healthcare Software Systems (HSS) are the UK’s
leading provider of RIS (Radiology Information
Systems) to public healthcare organisations,
health trusts, hospitals and clinics.
HSS has been designing, implementing and
supporting hospital-based information systems for
over 25 years and is the largest independent RIS
provider in the UK, with installations at over 175
NHS and private-units nationwide.
With the omnipresent need to manage the cost of
providing critical systems to their clients, HSS
decided to migrate their patient record database
from Oracle to PostgreSQL. This was by no means
a decision made lightly, as the critical nature of
the patient record system (that 64 UK healthcare
trusts rely on) could not be jeopardised in any way
– whether that be loss of access or reduced
performance.
After careful evaluation, the team – lead by Craig
Wilson, Technical Services Manager – made the
decision to migrate. With spiralling licence fees
from Oracle, the potential upside in terms of cost
savings was easy to appreciate. HSS just needed
to secure the services of an organisation that
understood PostgreSQL inside out and could
provide access to leading experts.
With up to 1000 concurrent users accessing the
data, the migration had to be smooth and
seamless to the healthcare professionals who rely
on this key system.
“The support from 2ndQuadrant has
been really good, dealing with
people who are keen to help us
quickly and really know their stuff.”
Craig Wilson, Technical Services Manager
2ndQuadrant were delighted to initially provide
consultancy services to HSS, thus ensuring a
successful migration to PostgreSQL on time and
without any issues. This initial engagement not
only provided HSS with the evidence of skills and
expertise that 2ndQuadrant could provide, it also
made it an obvious decision for HSS to award
2ndQuadrant the contract for Production Support.
HSS now benefits from Gold Production Support,
providing 24 x 7 access to experts and giving the
company the reassurance that if bugs appear in
the PostgreSQL database, help is at hand quickly
and efficiently. Craig’s team have benefitted from
their support contract a number of times and as
Craig comments, “The support from 2ndQuadrant
has been really good, dealing with people who are
keen to help us quickly and really know their
stuff.”
The migration to PostgreSQL went well and as
Chris remarks “Our migration has been relatively
smooth and PostgreSQL performs really well. The
support we now get is impressive compared to
what we’d previously experienced from Oracle as
it could take up to 3 days for an appropriate
response.”
HSS has also protects its data with Barman, an
open source administration tool for disaster
recovery of PostgreSQL. Barman allows Craig and
his team to perform remote backups of multiple
servers and help them during the recovery phase.
(Find out more at pgbarman.org)
With something as sensitive as patient data, the
basic foundations of a robust database
management system are critical. Like many
organisations, HSS have put their faith in the
worlds most advanced open source database,
releasing them from costly vendor lock-in and are
now experiencing far more flexibility, superior
support and service, and significantly reduced ongoing costs.
2ndQuadrant Services Provided:
Training
Consultancy
Production Support
_________________________________________
Barman (Backup and Recovery Manager) is an
open-source administration tool for disaster
recovery of PostgreSQL servers written in Python.
It allows your organisation to perform remote
backups of multiple servers in business critical
environments and help DBAs during the recovery
phase.
hssnet.com
Visit pgbarman.org for more information.
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