Automated PC Repair/Imaging/Compliance Solution Serves as Strong Medicine for IT Hospital Staff
| Industry: |
Healthcare |
 |
| Number of PCs: |
2,000 |
| IT Challenge: |
PC Imaging and HIPAA Mandates |
| Solution: |
Persystent Suite |
Q&A with Sean Keegan, IS Support Technician Supervisor:
How large is your IT department at UPH?
I manage a team of 9 helpdesk technicians based in Tucson at the UPH headquarter office. We serve nearly 2,000 PC end users, 1,500 of whom are remotely located in 12 different medical facilities and clinics, extending from Phoenix to Sierra Vista. The rest of the IT group includes 6 network administrators and 30 expert application specialists and report writers, who manage close to 140 applications for the clinics, hospital and health plan divisions.
How did you hear about Persystent Software?
I discovered the product while attending a local Angelbeat Conference. Persystent Software had a booth and they were demoing their product. The fact that it was a 3-in-1 PC repair, imaging and compliance tool meant a lot of bang for the buck. Unfortunately, at the time, my budget was already spent. About a year later, I was drawn to Persystent again at an IT healthcare (HIMSS) convention. It became very high on my wish list. This past summer (2009), we finally got the green light, and we started implementing the software on a limited scale in July.
Was there a compelling event that drove you to try Persystent Suite?
Absolutely, two things really. The first being that we needed a faster way and more efficient way to image machines. We were using an older version of Ghost, and felt that the process was time consuming and cumbersome. Granted, we could have upgraded to the latest version of Ghost, but we agreed that since Persystent Suite offered imaging, compliance and PC repair, we could get a lot more value for the money, and hopefully save a lot of time, too. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, we have end users in 12 locations throughout Arizona. What we really needed was the ability to image computers quickly – from a central location.
Additionally, we were facing even more pressure to aim higher at accommodating HIPAA guidelines to protect patient data. Everybody in healthcare IT knows how difficult HIPAA standards are to interpret. So we’re tackling the issues in a variety of ways, including rolling out encryption software like PGP on all laptops and implementing Persystent Suite on every computer.
How is Persystent Suite helping you achieve your goals?
It’s cutting our imaging time tremendously. My support technicians love it. We’ve been in the process of provisioning new Dell 760s in our business office as well as in our training rooms. We’re talking about 400 PCs. We set up a base image, and boom… Persystent Suite makes it so easy. We’re also testing out the Persystent repair feature with a small user group at the moment, just to see how it works. No complaints yet. Right now, our immediate challenge is imaging and provisioning computers loaded with applications strictly based on user group and job function. In the past, as long as licensing agreements weren’t a problem, we were a lot looser as far as application access went. We’re really pulling in the reins now. Persystent Suite is helping us set up user group policy and streamlining our imaging process.
Is there anything else you like about Persystent Suite?
Definitely. The fact that we have the ability to standardize desktop configurations through auto repair. A lot of PC end users have no idea that downloading a customized toolbar can cause conflicts with the interface of a commonly used software program (Sentillion, for patient record access management, being one of them). Getting back to HIPAA… we strongly feel that Persystent can better help us meet our goals and reach a higher standard of patient data protection. With its automated PC compliance and PC repair feature, we should be able to keep better control over machines in multi-user areas of our hospitals and clinics. Plus, it keeps viruses and spyware from compromising machines, and ultimately patient data. Being able to provide reports (on local and remote assets under management, mobile devices not encrypted, and so forth) is definitely a HIPAA expectation. Persystent Suite has awesome reporting and heal log capabilities.
What’s really great, too, is the power management feature of Persystent Suite. A lot of hospitals aren’t really thinking PC energy savings because they’re considered 24/7 work environments, but in our main business offices, training rooms and clinics with set hours, we’re powering down PCs not in use thanks to Persystent Suite. I think we will see substantial cost savings as a result. Plus, it should help us extend the life of our machines.
Do you have particular plans for Persystent Suite going forward?
I don’t want to set dates in stone, but we’re committed to using the product to its full extent as soon as possible. That means getting Persystent Suite on each and every machine and implementing the auto repair and compliance features. Right now, we’re working on imaging PCs that are better configured to user groups and job function. That’s our immediate focus. We can’t reach our ultimate goals overnight, but slowly and surely we’re getting where we want to be.
About University Physicians Healthcare
University Physicians Healthcare (UPH) is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1985 as the medical practice of the physicians of The University of Arizona College of Medicine. Together with University Physicians Hospital, The University of Arizona and University Medical Center, UPH cares for patients, educates medical students, trains physicians and conducts clinical research. With over 350 physicians (many listed in The Best Doctors in America) 260 nurses and 1,250 staff, UPH is Arizona’s largest physicians group.
About Persystent Software
Founded in 2002, Persystent Software has been instrumental to organizations in government, healthcare and education sectors with limited resources to support a high ratio of employees to IT staff and 24/7 business uptime. Persystent Software solutions ensure that end-user desktop and laptop computers are always available and fully functional – whether in the office or on the road. Persystent Software has developed the only automated PC recovery product on the market with unsurpassed speed – restoring application and operating system (O/S) files that are corrupted, changed or missing with just a simple reboot of the computer.
For more information on Persystent Software and its solutions, visit: www.persystent.com.