Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Facilitates Communication and Collaboration Across the Continuum of Medical Care at Hospital

OverviewCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Healthcare

Customer ProfileBLK Super Specialty is a standalone private hospital in New Delhi, India. It has nine state-of-the-art equipment critical care units for medical, surgical, cardiac, pediatrics, neonatology, neurosciences and organ transplants.

Business SituationThe hospital wanted to improve communication with doctors, free its resources from server administration and focus its efforts on core healthcare needs.

SolutionBLK migrated to the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 solution. This offered modern and scalable email functionality in the cloud.

Benefits Informed doctors deliver better care Improves patient care services Scalable, maintenance-free solution

supports expansion Saves costs by more than U.S.$10,000 Ensures patient confidentiality

“We provide healthcare staff an intelligent, intuitive web mail while the management and doctors have offline and online access to emails from any device – be it a smart phone or a tablet.”

Dr Mradul Kaushik, Director Operations & Planning, BLK Super Speciality Hospital

BLK Hospital’s nine Centres of Excellence see 80 patients each day. Doctors and nurses require regular information on each patient to ensure delivery of quick, accurate and safe medical care. The hospital has taken extensive measures to focus on patient safety and quality of care. Technology-led initiatives deliver information from the Hospital Information System and ERP – Microsoft Dynamics NAV via email using Microsoft Exchange Online, a part of Office 365. Nursing staff has regular access to the latest patient care orders ranging from medicine management, lab results, and vital signs to dressing changes and nutritional instructions. While doctors communicate with clinicians and non-clinical employees using smart phones and tablets, this new initiative allows the management to easily embark on its expansion path with greenfield and hospital acquisitions.

Situation Headquartered in Delhi, BLK Super Speciality Hospital is a 700-bed tertiary care hospital. Established in 1959 and redeveloped in 2009, the hospital offers a unique combination of the latest technology and highly qualified professionals to ensure world-class health care to all the patients.

The BLK management holds regular technology reviews to discuss new requirements and also find innovative solutions that add operational efficiency while enhancing patient care. The hospital uses a Hospital Information System (HIS) developed on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 that is integrated with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2. This ensures efficient billing and accurate reporting by validating all procedures and tests. In addition, the electronic medical records (EMR) system ensures doctors have access to patient records anywhere in the hospital.

In a recent technology review, it was realized that an effective communications platform was missing. The existing open-source email solution is hosted on an on-premise data center for 1000 users.

About 70 percent of the employees who need email access are the healthcare staff. Nurses are always on the move and often assigned to different floors, critical care units or operating rooms. Therefore web mail is ideal for them. Says Dr Sanjay Mehta, Medical Superintendent, “As our doctors and nurses are the backbone of our patient care delivery system, it is important for us to provide them access to information as required by them to improve efficiency and patient care. Our

brief to the IT team was to find such a solution and make it available quickly and within our budget.”

SolutionThe IT team explored various on-premise and cloud solutions such as Zimbra cloud, Zimbra on-premise, Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. The catch, however, is that most web mail services offer very basic features and are not comparable with the Microsoft Outlook experience. “It was imperative for us,” adds Prashant Singh, Head IT, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, “to provide individual emails supported by a global address book to add efficiency.”

The Hospital finally decided on Microsoft Office 365. “As we manage health records of individual patients in the hospital, security and privacy was critical for us. We examined Microsoft’s technology and controls closely and found that the data centers are independently audited and certified,” adds Prashant.

The hospital has the option to choose the services it needs, which allows cost control while giving a sophisticated, feature-rich email solution. Prashant Singh explains, “We provide the nursing staff an intelligent, intuitive webmail, while the management and doctors have offline and online access to emails from any device – be it a smart phone or a tablet.”

In December 2013, the hospital deployed Microsoft Office 365 for 1000 employees. Of these, 750 are on the Microsoft Exchange Online Kiosk licenses, primarily deployed for nursing staff. Another 250 are on E1 licenses, which were deployed for

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“The good thing is that we have all the instructions directly from the treating physicians, and this improves our ability to provide better critical care on time.”Rosamma, Chief Nursing Superintendent,

BLK Super Speciality Hospital

senior doctors, administration and marketing teams.

The hospital uses SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to generate and publish scheduled reports. This adds to productivity and efficiency of the organization.

Benefits

Informed Doctors Deliver Better CareMost doctors own the latest devices and are the first to adopt the newest technologies, be it the laptop or smart phone. With Office 365, it has become easy for doctors to use these devices at work for better efficiency. For example, they can check emails on the move, book appointments while on rounds, and receive new admission alerts, patient reports on email and SMSes. “Access to the latest developments and updated staff ensures better decisions from a physician, which in turn helps fast recovery of a patient,” states Dr Vikas Gupta, Head of Department, Neuro Surgery, BLK Super Speciality Hospital.

Improvement in Patient Care Services by Nursing Staff“The nursing staff uses web mail from different stations, which gives them access to the latest patient care orders ranging from medication, lab results and vital signs, to dressing changes and nutritional instructions,” comments Rosamma, Chief Nursing Superintendent, BLK Super Speciality Hospital. “The good thing is that we have all the instructions directly from the treating physicians, and this improves our ability to provide better critical care on time.”

Scalable, Maintenance-Free Solution Supports ExpansionOffice 365 gives the organization flexibility to embark on new growth strategies and integrate the same with existing data structure effortlessly. This ensures cost reduction by saving on manpower and other IT resources, apart from saving on regular maintenance costs. It also enables easy addition of new users at different locations. “It eliminates the need for planning hardware expansion, mailbox size and vendor management with a simple web-based tool to create new employee emails,” explains Naresh Kapoor, Director Finance & Strategy, BLK Super Speciality Hospital. Earlier, limited storage and server space restricted the addition of new users to the email solution, thus preventing rapid expansion.

Saves Cost by More Than U.S.$10,000Had BLK Hospital upgraded the existing server footprints, it would have increased the capital deployed. “By eliminating the need to upgrade on-premise email infrastructure, we saved more than U.S.$10,000 (INR 600,000),” elaborates Naresh.

Ensures Patient Confidentiality“Microsoft cloud is more secure than an on- premise data center. We are assured of email security and availability which otherwise would have been a costly affair. We are sure that our patient medical information is completely confidential,” elucidates Prashant.

Future PlansSays Prashant Singh, “The good thing with Office 365 is that we can add additional services such as Lync Online as and when required. So we pay for the services being

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“Access to the latest developments and updated staff ensures better decisions from a physician, which in turn helps fast recovery of a patient.”

Dr Vikas Gupta, Head Of Department, Neuro Surgery, BLK Super Speciality

Hospital

delivered presently, but also have the option to add these in the future.” For example, the hospital is planning to obtain a few Lync licenses to facilitate real-time communications giving the management and senior doctors instant messaging, web, and video conferencing options. 

We are also planning to upgrade to web-based Dynamics NAV 2013 to simplify access and connectivity.

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Microsoft Office 365The new Office provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications—plus email, calendar, video conferencing, and your most current documents—on almost any device, from PCs to smartphones to tablets.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about BLK Super Speciality Hospital services, call (91) (11) 3040-3040 or visit the website at: www.blkhospital.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published February 2014

Software and Services Microsoft Office 365− Exchange Online−

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, R2 Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server Reporting Services