Desktop Virtualization-centric Cloud Computing Solutions Take Center Stage for Healthcare Industry, as IT Budgets Tighten

Wyse is the leading thin and zero client provider to the healthcare industry, with more installations than any other provider at the 'Most Wired Hospitals' for 2009 according to Hospitals & Health Networks. Wyse can be found at the Orlando Orange County Convention Center in Booth 1301.

Companies are finding that Wyse software and hardware solutions can handle the rigors and dynamic demands of working in hospital and clinical environments. Through the use of Wyse management, virtualization, and cloud software, in concert with thin, zero and cloud PC clients, healthcare organizations are able to safeguard shared workstations from security risks while streamlining access to information. Wyse cloud and desktop virtualization solutions also automate key procedures and enhance collaboration between healthcare professionals, which ultimately contributes to improving overall patient care.

From a compliance perspective, desktop virtualization not only simplifies application management and maintenance, but also removes the personal computer from the equation. With Wyse’s cloud client computing solutions, there is no local storage and no access to personal information as a result of lost or stolen hardware. Furthermore, inventory and auditing processes are far simpler, freeing up IT time for more strategic purposes.
Here are what some customers have had to say about their experience with Wyse:

Located in central New Jersey, Raritan Bay Medical Center (RBMC) treated more than 90,000 patients in 2008. In 2009, U.S. News & World Report ranked it among the best U.S. hospitals. For RBMC, use of Wyse thin clients means less troubleshooting and far easier and faster problem resolution. IT staff receives 50 percent fewer help desk tickets, eliminating several hours weekly spent on break-fix issues. Corrupted user profiles that once accounted for up to a dozen calls per week, have been nearly eliminated.

"There are many things we can troubleshoot long before they become issues for RBMC's end users," according to Eric Brown, a network analyst based at RBMC and an employee of Siemens Healthcare, the managed services provider that handles the medical center's IT environment. "With just 300 Wyse thin clients deployed, we're already better able to focus on improving the environment and making it more stable and secure, rather than being consumed with help desk tickets."

Interfaith Medical Center is a multi-site community teaching healthcare system that provides a wide range of medical services throughout Brooklyn, New York. The institution operates a newly modernized hospital and 16 clinics, serving more than 250,000 patients every year. Squeezed by a combination of rising costs and declining reimbursements, Interfaith looked for tools that would help it continue to deliver excellent care while reducing its administrative costs. A combination of reduced total cost of ownership and improved security and compliance have led Interfaith to begin the process of replacing PCs with Wyse thin clients.

"Thin clients are cheaper than PCs, and take less time and money to maintain," according to Meraz Nasir, Manager of Infrastructure at Interfaith. "Even more important, they deliver rock-solid reliability and speed. They help ensure our staff always have what they need to fulfill our mission of delivering excellent patient care, while freeing up financial resources for further investment in serving patients. In addition, HIPAA regulations about privacy of patient data are stringent, and thin clients help us to comply and prove compliance. With thin clients, Interfaith can roll out any changes to security policies everywhere at once, in a comprehensive, traceable way."

Baptist Health Systems provides health and medical services from its eight clinics and 564-bed medical center in Jackson, Mississippi. Though Baptist’s commitment to providing compassionate care hasn’t changed since its founding in 1911, its IT systems have always kept evolving in order to maintain quality of care. Recently, that evolution has included the move to VDI.

“For Baptist Health, VDI is a game-changer,” according to Tam Ragab, Manager of Network Services at Baptist Health. "We can go ahead and implement the operating systems and other solutions that make sense for our organization without having to wait for our vendors. Wyse and VMware have put us back in charge so that we can provide our organization the security and IT performance it requires—at a much lower price than we used to pay—to support our mission of delivering patients the affordable, high-quality care they deserve."

When the deployment is complete, Ragab estimates he will have saved the hospital in power consumption and cut down on the help desk calls that was needed by purchasing 2,500 Wyse zero clients instead of leasing the same number of PCs. Furthermore, while PCs need to be replaced every three or four years, Ragab won't have to budget for replacement of those Wyse zero clients any time in the near future.

The University of Louisville School of Dentistry (ULSD) enjoys a rich heritage in dental education and a reputation for clinical excellence that reaches back over a hundred years. To keep in synch with best practices in the industry, ULSD eliminated paper-based record-keeping several years ago and implemented chair-side access to electronic medical records (EMRs). ULSD's first concern was reliability of chair-side devices. Its clinics handle more than 100,000 patient visits each year.

"We couldn't afford to have PC maintenance issues take chairs out of commission, so we chose Wyse ThinOS-based thin clients along with Citrix HDX technology for their reliability, longer refresh cycles, and ability to store images digitally," explains Christopher Morgan, director of Dental Informatics at ULSD. "We didn't need to bring in PCs at all. Instead, this implementation put us on the cutting edge of technology: we became one of the first dental organization to take radiographic images with digital sensors and upload those images using thin clients."

Seattle Children's Hospital in Seattle, WA has approximately 4,500 employees supporting 292,000 annual patient visits. The hospital is consistently ranked among the nation’s best children's hospitals by U.S. News & World Report magazine. It's also the primary teaching, clinical, and research site for the Department of Pediatrics at the University Of Washington School Of Medicine. The IT team at Seattle Children's recently undertook the task of improving patient care by improving the system responsiveness.

"We wanted the technology to be so fast, pervasive, and intuitive for our staff that it was almost invisible to our patients," explains Jake Hughes, Senior Enterprise Architect at Seattle Children's. "As soon as we identified VDI as our approach, we knew we wanted Citrix and Wyse as our partners. The partnership between the companies and the integration of their technologies made us confident that they would work together to help us get the solution we wanted."

Seattle Children's is deploying a centralized virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) leveraging Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp in concert with approximately 3,000 Wyse Xenith next-generation zero-client devices. The implementation has accelerated connecting to systems from several minutes to five seconds, saving staff time and improving patient interactions. It’s anticipated to virtually eliminate desktop technical issues, enhance patient service and save $1.2 million of IT staff time. Financially, the implementation is anticipated to achieve a threefold increase in desktop performance while avoiding $6 million in PC replacement over 5 years; and cutting energy costs by $1 million over that same period.

"Healthcare is Wyse Technology’s largest market segment," according to Maryam Alexandrian, SVP worldwide sales and channels at Wyse Technology. "Thin and zero clients from Wyse deliver benefits across healthcare IT's critical concerns: security, lower TCO, and energy efficiency. And between the HITECH Act and HIPAA, compliance might be the single most critical issue in the healthcare industry and our customers are recognizing the compliance benefits thin and zero clients in their environments."

Wyse Technology and Healthcare
Wyse has been providing cloud and desktop virtualization solutions to the healthcare industry since 1995. With Wyse in place, IT administrators are replacing their high-cost, high-maintenance PCs with thinner, smarter solutions. The benefits to healthcare organizations include having a safer computing environment, lower TCO, greater energy efficiency, and less maintenance; all while helping organizations make the move to Electronic Health Records, maintaining HIPAA compliance, safeguarding sensitive patient and employee information, and supporting a mobile medical staff.

About Wyse Technology
Wyse Technology is the global leader in Cloud Client Computing. Wyse portfolio includes industry-leading thin, zero and cloud PC client solutions with advanced management, desktop virtualization and cloud software supporting desktops, laptops and next generation mobile devices. Cloud client computing replaces the outdated computing model of the unsecure, unreliable, energy-intensive and expensive PC, all while delivering lower TCO and a superior user experience. Wyse has shipped more than 20 million units and has over 200 million people interacting with their products each day, enabling the leading private, public, hybrid and government cloud implementations worldwide. Wyse partners with industry-leading IT vendors, including Citrix®, IBM®, Microsoft, and VMware® as well as globally-recognized distribution and service partners. Wyse is headquartered in San Jose, California, U.S.A., with offices worldwide. More information can be found at www.wyse.com