Ruby Hall Clinic, one of Pune’s largest hospitals adopted Citrix XenApp, which has enabled the organization to improve productivity and efficiency, provide the power of mobility to its users and reducing app management cost by 90%.
Healthcare is at a cusp of change wherein immediate diagnosis and treatment are becoming almost a staple requirement from patients’ side. With 550 inpatient beds (including 130 intensive-care beds), a staff strength of 150 consultants, 500 panel doctors and 1400 paramedical staff, Ruby Hall Clinic is one of the oldest and most reputable hospitals in Pune. As a large hospital,Ruby Hall had certain personalization, performance and mobility requirements across the organization. Doctors were finding it challenging and limiting to access reports and patient records only on a traditional desktop infrastructure. Aligning efficiency with the current healthcare demands made Ruby Hall’s IT team look towards technology.
“Our main issue was accessing our applications anywhere and anytime. Ours is a legacy software developed in DB. It cannot be accessed outside the premises of the hospital, and due to which doctors cannot view the report of the patient immediately if they are on the move,”says Anand Patil, GM – IT, Ruby Hall Clinic. As a result the hospital decided to implement Citrix XenApp. The hospital through XenApp published its application on it which could be accessed anytime outside the hospital premises.
“Doctors regularly want to check diagnostics of the patient, MRI scans, lab reports etc. The management also wants to access our MIS software. Our software is in-house built. We are using it for pharmacy, nursing station application, customer feedback, material management system, lab information, archiving etc. In such a scenario having an uninterrupted access becomes extremely crucial,” explains Patil.
Ruby Hall decided to deploy Citrix XenApp in 2015. The time taken for deployment was very less around ten days. It has been deployed on a server at Ruby Hall’s datacentre itself. As a POC is a must in such implementations, a pilot for one month was carried out. The benefits of the implementation were very immediately apparent among the Ruby Hall staff. Firstly, the deployment of the solution has simplified the entire process. In the ICU and CCU, all doctors are using it to give reports at the bedside of the patient. Presently, there are around 20-30 doctors in Critical Care Unit utilizing this. Overall users are around 50-60.
“Doctors can now access the application on any kind of device. We have given them iPads to to use it within the premises. However, outside the hospital, they can access it on their personal device. The application is going through a firewall for security purpose. From the server side, all security precautions are already taken,” elaborates Patil on the implementation. Due to this application, doctors can take patient related information instantly. From a patient perspective, its usefulness cannot be undermined.
According to Patil, even from a management perspective, they can access any facts and figures and take decisions immediately. “It is deployed on Windows server, but it can be deployed even on Linux,”he says. Ruby Hall is planning a new hospital at Hinjewadi where the IT team is planning to use Citrix XenApp as well.
Emphasizing on how impactful is this technology in healthcare Patil says, “The deployment of Citrix XenApp has proved to be a game changer for Ruby Hall, as it allows us to access applications from anywhere and deployment of applications is also much easier. The results have been wonderful and have improved the overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. The critical care areas have seen special improvements with productivity going up by as much as 30%.”