Customer Solution Case Study
/ Software Firm Delivers NHS Vision to 24 Million Patients with 100 Per Cent Uptime
“Moving to SQL Server 2008 R2 is a critical step to prepare for further improvements in both the private hosted solution and data platform space using Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012.”
Phil Grayson, Infrastructure Lead, TPP
TPP SystmOne pioneers “one patient, one record” healthcare. Running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 private hosted solution, it supports 140,000 active registered NHS users, with a peak of 72,100 concurrent users, and manages 24 million patient records. Clinicians, nurses, and other professionals are impressed with its ease of use, which has led to improved data accuracy—vital for patient safety.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published October 2012
Business Needs
The TPP vision of “one patient, one record” mirrors the principle of the National Health Service (NHS) to provide integrated care.The vision states that professionals should be able to access a single source of information detailing a patient’s contact with the NHS across their lifetime. The record should be accessible whatever the care setting and available to any authorised user to enter all patient information, including details about appointments and medication.
Data-entry performance, high availability, and ease of use are vital to ensure that patient information is rapidly and accurately updated. It guarantees that as patients move between the various points of healthcare provision, each clinician or nurse can be confident that they’re seeing the most up-to-date and accurate information about their patient.
As the delivery of medical care becomes more complex, clinicians and nurses require solutions that support collaboration between different NHS hospitals and practices.This is vital for patient safety and to deliver optimal healthcare as efficiently as possible.
As well as ensuring that patient information can be entered and maintained, it’s important to provide extensive reporting and information analysis to the wide variety of users, ranging from small General Practitioner (GP) practices to large primary care facilities.
To deliver this business vision and help deploy the solution quickly and cost effectively, TPP—the market leaders in hosted clinical systems in England—required a database platform that could scale to support tens of thousands of concurrent users and provide high availability and disaster recovery. In addition to performance and scalability, the NHS demands extremely high levels of security due to the sensitive nature of the data stored, which is expected to reach more than 200 terabytes.
Solution
After reviewing various options, including Oracle, TPP decided to build SystmOne on Microsoft SQL Server R2 Enterprise, using the Windows Server operating system for high availability and disaster recovery.
Phil Grayson, Infrastructure Lead, TPP, says: “We needed a low-cost, high-performance database platform to ensure 100 per cent uptime for SystmOne, which provides clinicians, nurses, and other NHS professionals with a complete management system, including electronic patient records, patient bookings, and referrals.”
TPP recently upgraded the database platform to SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and has experienced performance gains without the need for further hardware investment.SQL Server 2008 R2 has added greater scalability, along with more efficient server management and expanded reporting and analytics. It manages large volumes of data easily and reduces the space needed for backup compression. Grayson says: “SystmOne is a highly secure hosted solution that can share data across at least 24 health settings and is accredited to the government Connecting for Health standards. Moving to SQL Server 2008 R2 is a critical step to prepare for further improvements in both the private hosted solution and data platform space using Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012.”
SystmOne now manages more than 24 million individual patient records and is used every day by a peak of 72,100 concurrent users. There are 140,000 active registered users, including nurses, clinicians and other NHS professionals.
The reporting solution in SystmOne allows detailed clinical analysis and performance monitoring for all users. Users range from small GP practices to the award-winning Airedale General Hospital in Yorkshire. Detailed reports can be created by clinicians on a self-service basis and run throughout the day, securely returning results in just a few seconds. Grayson adds: “SystmOne has both a primary data centre and a second disaster recovery data centre, which guarantees our customers zero data loss.” Healthcare services using SystmOne have no need to worry about local server maintenance, nightly backups, and software updates.
Benefits
Using the Microsoft SQL Server database platform on a Windows Server private hosted solution, TPP provides a high performance, scalable solution to its NHS customers, helping them deliver effective healthcare to around 24 million managed patients and take on several thousand new patients a month with 100 per cent uptime. SystmOne is fulfilling the vision of “one patient, one record,” ensuring that 140,000 registered NHS healthcare usershave complete confidence in the accuracy and security of patient data.
- TPP platform helps improve data quality. Dr. Talac Mahmud, Senior Partner, First Care Practice, London, says: “It’s easy to look at results and see patterns. Because it’s so simple to update summaries in the record, data quality has been boosted. Almost everything is recorded without you having to do anything, which is vital for monitoring activity and workflow.”
- SystmOne offers flexible ways of working. Simon Longden, Practice Manager at Parkstone Health Centre, Dorset, says: “SystmOne provides us with a feeling of security and allows us to work easily with other organisations. It also gives that element of flexibility, so I can log on to a laptop and deal with work from home if necessary.”
- SQL Server delivers rapid responses to self-service queries. Analysis and queries on patient records are processed faster with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, resulting in improved efficiency while at the same time avoiding the need for new hardware. Dr. Alison Blue, General Practitioner, St Catherine’s Hospice, says: “I think SystmOne is fabulous. I love the ease of access to information and its availability across all healthcare settings.”
- Firm avoids expenditure on third-party software. Data compression and compressed backups, which are built-in to SQL Server 2008 R2, have helped TPP avoid spending money on third-party support, while reducing the need for data storage space.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2012