Bumrungrad powers digital transformation

Bumrungrad International Hospital (BIH), a Thailand-based state-of-the-art healthcare facility driving clinical innovation, has implemented Dell EMC’s converged infrastructure solution to improve patient care. From online patient registration to automated laboratories that provide more accurate diagnostic results to clinicians and DNA sequencing to personalise cancer treatment, BIH has laid the foundation for an always-on hospital.

Thailand is a prime destination in Southeast Asia’s burgeoning medical tourism industry; generating an estimated THB40 billion a year in treatment fees alone for Thailand. BIH – with its enhanced IT infrastructure that scales in step with medical advancements, and already serving 520,000 foreign patients annually – was the first Asian hospital accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI) that reviews hospitals based on over 350 standards and is one of the leading hospitals in the region, further boosting Thailand’s position as a global medical tourism destination.

Establishing revolutionary cancer treatments according to genetic makeup

Cancer treatment has been very well developed for the past 50 years and has become progressively more effective. Emerging and new targeted treatments according to a patient’s genetic makeup is opening up the field of medicine to less damaging forms of cancer treatment. DNA sequencing is key to this treatment, yet, it is also data intensive and requires considerable IT capacity and compute resources to process.

“Having personalised data on a patient helps doctors to tailor a treatment plan that is specific for the patient, aided by a better understanding of the underlying conditions. With DNA sequencing, physicians will be able to choose drugs based on the genetic mutation of each patient’s tumour and avoid those that may cause side effects for that patient,” said Dr Erik Fleischman, International Medical Director, Bumrungrad International Hospital.

“Fundamentally, every business is going through a period of change fuelled by digital transformation and healthcare is no different,” said Dickon Smart-Gill, Corporate Chief Information Officer, Bumrungrad International Hospital. “At Bumrungrad International Hospital, we recognise that technology underpins the entire patient cycle and differentiates us in two core ways: quality of service and the speed of accessing those services. We chose to work with Dell EMC to accelerate patient care by moving to a single, converged platform that reduces inefficiencies, supports world-class clinical research, and enables streamlined management of the hospital environment itself.”

Implementing an always-on IT infrastructure

With over three million tests conducted annually, amounting to nearly 10,000 tests per day, the hospital required a robust IT infrastructure to process large volumes of data and generate personalised information for patients. The hospital was very traditional in its IT purchase strategy. Purchasing components separately prevented the hospital from achieving a 100 percent uptime. Additionally, the service level agreements and stringent key performance indicators meant that running mission-critical applications on the cloud would fail to meet BIH’s biggest goal – patient safety and privacy. Designed to deliver real-time patient data while removing costly siloes, a strategic decision was made to operate mission-critical applications on Dell EMC’s converged infrastructure platform, the Dell EMC VxBlock System.

Dell EMC deployed two VxBlock Systems 540 with XtremIO All-Flash storage for the hospital’s data centres to run their mission-critical applications, including the Hospital Information System, electrophysiology lab applications and electronic nursing patient system. The VxBlock Technology Extensions for Isilon provided a cost-effective storage repository for large and small medical images, electronic medical records, genetics data, video and data analytics. To manage and process general workload data such as from ERP systems and other in-house applications, the Dell EMC Unity storage was deployed. Ensuring unparalleled data protection in the face of any business disruption, the Dell EMC VPLEX was implemented enabling 99.99999% application availability and data mobility across BIH’s data centres.

BIH now has a data centre solution that delivers superior levels of patient care to over 1.1 million patients annually, of which nearly half are international patients coming from 190 countries. IT no longer purchases stand-alone systems as current and future state requirements can now be addressed with Dell EMC’s converged infrastructure platform. With the VxBlock Systems, BIH is able to strengthen its leadership in smart, effective medical care for patients from around the world.

“Access to real-time data is critical to deliver the best patient care, which means systems must be available at all times. We are uniquely positioned to help Bumrungrad International Hospital power its digital transformation journey by delivering solutions that analyse and secure patient data; transitioning from episodic care to one that is coordinated to improve individual patient outcomes,” said James McCready, vice president, Converged Platforms and Solutions, Asia Pacific & Japan, Dell EMC.

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