Comments on: Make sure your online SaaS vendors are appliance-capable

By: Uranie Armstrong

Uranie Armstrong — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:07:53 +0000

Hi,
I have been recently looking into getting a software as a service PACS system for our office in an effort to go entirely electronic without breaking our budget. Do you know of a general price range that I could be looking at for a 2 doctor practice? How is the pricing structure generally, flat monthly fee, pay per scan or a combination of both? I find that I am totally clueless the more I read about different PACS systems and ultimately the budget will determine if we can get a system or not.
Thanks

By: Trusted.MD Network

Trusted.MD Network — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:17:16 +0000

Guest Article: Rich Internet Applications for Improved Healthcare App User Experience…

I’m a huge fan of thin-client systems but the thinner the client, the less functionality it seems to support. A pretty smart colleague of mine, François Jean, is an engineer at Cardinal Health working on a bed side information system and he has some…

By: Chris Gervais

Chris Gervais — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:10:24 +0000

Shahid, good points. The issue of out-sourcing critical, but non-strategic platforms like email brings policy concerns and SLAs to the forefront. With Google and Microsoft offering very low-cost email hosting solutions, it may attractive for IT organizations to look at their operating costs and see if outsourced email represents an area of cost-savings. However, if your email management policies are unclear or don’t match those of your service provider, the costs due to unforseen events could be much higher.

The “cloud OS” is a nice concept, but healthcare organizations that are highly reliant on electronic clinical sysems have to clearly understand the risks and have strong mitigation plans in place. If you’re investing in SaaS capabilities, clearly architect the solution and the round-trip your data will be making. You may need to further invest in redundant Internet connections or as Shahid points out, extend your datacenter operations to include support for vendor-supplied appliance devices so that the cloud is truly transparent: it’s running in your datacenter down the street or in a datacenter across the globe. Just remember to keep your users in the forefront of your mind as you plan these seemingly invisible infrastructure changes.

By: Trusted.MD Network

Trusted.MD Network — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:55:04 +0000

Welcome to Health Care Wonk Review – September 6, 2007…

Brian Klepper and Pat Salber …

By: SP

SP — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:04:26 +0000

I whole heartedly agree with Shahid’s main point on SaaS appliance strategy, however, I would have never said in a million year that Microsoft “definitely knows what they are doing in the server space and online applications arena”. Though that latter is a minor point.

By: The PACS Designer

The PACS Designer — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 23:58:02 +0000

Shahid’s advice is so timely as we are seeing more use of the web through SaaS offerings propelled by the move to Web 2.0 services which are increasing the size of clouds.

Having designed PACS for hospitals I know the importance of having backup systems in place for those unexpected downtimes and not knowing how long they will be down. One way to deal with the problem is to make sure the backup server is somewhere within your organization preferably in a building other than where the main server is. This server can be dual purpose by partitioning it to handle internal as well as external system outages if it is configured correctly. Also using RAID storage can offer the opportunity to insure a designated time frame of data files is always available even during system outages as long as power to the systems is not interrupted. Don’t be afraid to ask your SaaS vendor to provide this service at your designated site location if you are not capable of doing it yourself.