St. Luke’s Healthcare System Opts for Nutanix and Citrix

Nutanix, Inc. announced that St. Luke’s Health System (SLHS), a US healthcare provider, has deployed its architecture to provide a more flexible and efficient IT environment.

SLHS selected Nutanix to support it during two major transitions: the migration of applications to the Windows 7 platform and to support the transition of an ambulatory healthcare provider onto SLHS’s existing application platform on Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. Because of the scalability and flexibility of the Nutanix platform, SLHS was able to complete both projects without running into the compatibility and integration issues legacy systems often introduce.

Nutanix web-scale hyper-converged solutions with Citrix Systems, Inc. make the transition to virtual desktops easier, simplifying deployment and ongoing management. This ease of use allowed SLHS to migrate more than 3,000 users to Windows 7-based virtual desktops in only three weeks with none of the compatibility issues of legacy systems. The solution is designed to be scaled to meet any level of demand and can make migrations simple and effective. Additional virtual desktops can non-disruptively supported by adding new nodes to an existing deployment.

After a recent service expansion, SLHS had only two months to transition an rehabilitation inpatient and ambulatory healthcare services onto its existing application platform, demanding rapid integration of the new facilities into the SLHS IT ecosystem. This would not be possible using legacy architecture; however, the Nutanix’s web-scale technology was able to meet the challenge by accelerating and simplifying its infrastructure deployment, thereby freeing resources for on-boarding the new facility and clinical staff.

“One of the key reasons that we chose Nutanix was for its reliability and performance. This Citrix-based deployment came online to immediately provide a reliable environment across 30 clinics, a hospital and 600 devices,” said Brett Taylor, director of IT infrastructure and operations, SLHS. “The Nutanix installation was straightforward and freed my team’s resources for other projects, a trend that will hopefully continue as the Nutanix solution helps to change the role of our IT team to one that assists our physicians and administrators find new innovative solutions for better care.“

“Cost and efficiency are huge concerns for the healthcare IT market, with the American Hospital Association showing that hospitals have absorbed $122 billion in cuts since 2010,” says George Fiffick, healthcare practice manager, Nutanix. “The Nutanix hyper-converged architecture with web-scale technologies reinvents IT infrastructure and in doing so allows our healthcare customers to reduce costs, simplify operations and improve the end-user experience.“

Among SLHS’s applications that are deployed on the Nutanix platform is its Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR). EHRs are a key component of modern healthcare and the need for anywhere, anytime access to patient information represents a challenge to the healthcare industry to provide the infrastructure that can meet this growing demand. Nutanix worked with Epic Systems Corp. in a lab environment to demonstrate success in using Nutanix servers for deploying the Epic Hyperspace client via application deployment technologies.

“We see tremendous opportunities to drive value with Nutanix in the healthcare industry by helping customers like SLHS deliver better patient care through improved access to electronic healthcare records,” said Calvin Hsu, VP of product marketing, desktop and apps, Citrix Systems, Inc. “The Nutanix plug-in for Citrix XenDesktop, which has been validated as Citrix Ready, combines the benefits of Nutanix VM-centric functionality with Citrix Machine Creation Services for improved data protection, it will be even easier for us to work in partnership to bring even more benefits to customers like SLHS.“

Another benefit that Nutanix provides for organizations deploying EHR applications like SLHS is an additional layer of data security to enable compliance with the requirements for safeguarding protected health information (PHI). According to the Fourth Annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy & Data Security from The Ponemon Institute, LLC and sponsored by ID Experts Corp., the loss or theft of computing devices accounted for 49% of all data breaches last year. In legacy systems, employees and third party contractors would be provided with physical devices that were susceptible to loss and theft.

To reduce this threat with Nutanix, PHI is safeguarded in the data center with data at rest encryption technology, mitigating the chance of theft and corresponding fines associated with the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

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