Healthcare Provider Solves Imaging Application Slowdown Issues in their Virtual Server Environment with NETSCOUT
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- NETSCOUT vSTREAM Virtual Appliance
- nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform
- InfiniStreamNG appliances
Tech Stack
- Virtual Server Environment
- Private Data Center
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Private Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- System Integration
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
A leading U.S. healthcare provider, this 100-year old non-profit delivers both health insurance and healthcare services across member hospitals, medical centers, and group practices serving the needs of their community. Beyond operating a Level 1 Trauma Center and several hospitals, their over 1,200 physicians and 15,000 full-time employees deliver exceptional care to literally millions of admitted and walk-in patients every year in over 40 specialty areas, including cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, oncology, and more. They make teaching and research a cornerstone of their services and are regarded as a premier academic medical center.
The Challenge
The healthcare organization was experiencing radiology application slowdown issues that were impacting patients. Doctors and nurses were suffering significant wait times of up to 20 minutes delay in pulling up cardiology images. These cardiology images were critical to have available during patients’ exams for evaluation and diagnosis. Given the nature of the cardiology practice, minutes can mean the difference between life and death. The radiology information system (RIS), that leverages the DICOM protocol (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) to communicate, was responsible for the file transfers, how the documents are stored, and how the doctors are able to access the right radiology image for the patient in question. In trying to triage the problem over a few weeks, several war room calls were conducted that included a number of the healthcare organization’s IT staff as well as third-party vendors, including the application provider. At times, there were upward of 20 people on the daily call trying to pinpoint the source of the problem. A great deal of time was lost as each vendor tried to prove it wasn’t their part of the environment which was creating the slowdown.
The Solution
The healthcare company was already utilizing NETSCOUT solutions across its private data center, affiliated hospitals, and medical buildings. The nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform, a variety of InfiniStreamNG appliances, and nGenius 3900 series packet flow switches for visibility were already deployed in private cloud and hospital locations. The radiology application was hosted on virtualized servers in the private cloud, where historically there was a lack of visibility capabilities that could interoperate with a holistic service assurance monitoring solution. Network Operations recommended implementing the vSTREAM virtual appliance to monitor wire-date in several of the virtualized radiology application servers to send Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI) smart data to the existing nGeniusONE platform. Strategically, this provided the IT team comprehensive, vendorindependent, end-to-end visibility and service assurance for its patient-impacting services like radiology. The network operations team worked with the application team to research the issue. With nGeniusONE analyzing ASI information from the InfiniStreamNG appliances in the private data center, the IT team had previously concluded that the network was not the source of the problem. Leveraging nGeniusONE’s HL7 (Health Level 7) Service Monitor for in-depth analysis, they also ruled out interoperability as an issue.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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