How a Health System Leveraged WWT's Industry Expertise to Streamline VDI Optimization and App Migration

Challenge

A nonprofit health system that provides advanced medical care throughout California was experiencing difficulties with its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. VDI is a technology that enables end users to access enterprise computer systems from nearly any internet-enabled device (e.g., PC, tablet, smartphone, etc.), often removing the need for employers to provide, manage, repair and replace physical computers.

The health system's VDI environment was healthy and operational from a technical standpoint, yet both clinical and non-clinical users were having an increasingly poor user experience. In other words, the solution worked, but it did not address the critical day-to-day needs of various personas across the health system's more than 3,600 employee base. As a result, the system's IT department was forced to devise inefficient workarounds that, in some cases, negatively impacted patient care.

In addition to its VDI optimization problem, many of the health system's applications resided on legacy data center technologies. The IT department was working under a tight timeline to migrate these applications to a new, modernized data center — a complex process that might encounter challenges related to:

• Compatibility: Legacy applications might not be compatible with modern hardware and software environments. This can require significant modifications or even complete rewrites of older applications.
• Data migration: Transferring large volumes of data can be complex and time-consuming. Ensuring data integrity and minimizing downtime during the migration process are both critical to success.
• Security: Modernized data centers often have different security protocols and standards. Ensuring legacy applications meet these new security requirements can be challenging.
• Downtime and business continuity: Minimizing downtime during the migration is crucial, especially for health systems where continuous access to applications and data is vital for patient care.
• Resource allocation: Migrating applications requires significant resources, including skilled personnel, time and financial investment. Proper planning and resource allocation are essential to avoid delays and budget overruns.
• Testing and validation: Extensive testing is required to ensure that migrated applications function correctly in the new environment. This includes performance testing, security testing and user acceptance testing.
• Change management: Staff may need training to adapt to new systems and processes. Effective change management strategies are necessary to ensure a smooth transition.
• Regulatory compliance: Health systems must comply with various regulations, such as HIPAA. Ensuring that the new data center meets all regulatory requirements is essential.
• Vendor coordination: Coordinating with multiple vendors for hardware, software and services can be complex. Clear communication and coordination are necessary to ensure all components integrate and work together seamlessly.
• Timeline constraints: A tight timeline adds pressure to the migration process. Detailed planning and efficient execution are required to meet deadlines without compromising the quality of patient care.

The health system needed to trust that its technology partner not only understood the healthcare space but also how various technology decisions would impact day-to-day operations and patient outcomes.

Solution

Having heard favorable remarks about WWT from a prior employer, the Director of IT contacted us to gauge our ability to meet the health system's VDI transformation and data center application migration discovery needs.

Taking a high-performance team approach, a group of WWT healthcare advisors, application services experts and consulting solution architects engaged the Director and his team in a round of ideation sessions designed to understand their IT challenges and educate them on WWT's technical and execution capabilities. Throughout these initial discussions, we challenged, advised and provided various technical recommendations. We also showcased the value of our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), including its ability to accelerate the health system's IT decision-making timeline.

Via a blend of consulting and advisory services, our team identified and defined all relevant persona cares, needs and roles in relation to the health system's VDI solution. The output of these persona-based modeling sessions allowed us to provide precise recommendations from technical and architectural perspectives, supporting both clinical and business initiatives for the client with a financial ROI that moved Phase 1 forward. This engagement methodology was key to winning over the client and separating us from the competition. The client's leadership pointed out that WWT showed up differently and listened to the right people. For the first time, the clinical staff felt heard on the non-EHR IT transformation issues that impacted their workflows.

Moreover, our team was able to get a head start on the health system's application migration project (Phase 2), which involved another series of ideation sessions to understand the migration's magnitude, including how to de-risk and automate a successful migration.

Outcomes

The health system's Director of IT was thoroughly impressed with WWT's advisory and technical capabilities within the healthcare space and valued our consultative approach to building client relationships. Given that the health system's CIO, CMIO and CISO all had direct visibility into this project, the stakes were high for the Director of IT and for WWT to deliver the exact blend of sought-after technical and industry expertise.

The success of this initial consulting engagement has created a path toward future collaboration with the health system on Phase 2 of its transformation vision. This phase will involve executing and implementing our VDI environment recommendations and conducting the application migration.