MEDITECH: Designing innovative software solutions in the cloud to improve patient care
About MEDITECH
MEDITECH wants to help build a world in which every patient can access their health information and participate in their own care. It develops electronic health record (EHR) solutions to simplify and enhance clinicians' interactions with patients and technologies that encourage human connection.
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Contact usMEDITECH migrated to cloud-based servers to more efficiently provide healthcare teams with the information they need to help their patients.
Google Cloud results
- Eases integration of third-party healthcare apps to give healthcare providers more control of their platform
- Improves team collaboration with a secure cloud development environment
- Reduces thousands of dollars in spending on additional onsite server housing and maintenance
Migrated to cloud servers to decrease development time
Today’s EHRs have evolved from data repositories into active decision-making tools for healthcare teams. These platforms are now essential tools in the healthcare industry’s efforts to do more with less while reducing practitioner burnout.
MEDITECH has been pioneering change in the EHR space for more than 50 years, and it’s been able to secure its place as an industry leader by developing solutions with healthcare teams in mind. Physicians and clinical care teams can provide the best possible care for their patients when they can access their most important medical details faster. That’s why MEDITECH works to create flexible, customizable EHR solutions to help care teams access patient details in a fast, secure way.
In its pursuit of new, innovative ways to scale the EHR space and get ahead of new industry needs, MEDITECH saw an opportunity to migrate its legacy server hardware to the cloud.
Defining new expectations for industry-leading EHR capabilities
MEDITECH’s focus is building software for clinicians, but it has to build and operate in a highly regulated environment which means its infrastructure has to be secure. The company recognized that cloud resources offer new ways to manage and protect its data and its patients’ data while still delivering on its commitment to fast development.
Additionally, the advanced technology team was working across multiple servers and virtual machines and wanted to consolidate those systems to improve collaboration and accelerate new launches. "We knew we needed to make the move to a cloud native environment to keep up with our own expectations for how fast we could deliver new solutions," said Brett Strasnick, Director of Cloud Services at MEDITECH. Additional flexibility would provide MEDITECH with the tools the team needed to deliver a more joyful user experience for physicians more efficiently than ever.
In the mid-2010s, as MEDITECH evaluated the cost of maintaining its server hardware and data storage, it found that a cloud-based solution would better support its overall infrastructure. With a cloud-based solution, the company could centralize its data with a secure, compliant platform, and have greater flexibility to test, iterate, and scale.
During the cloud evaluation process, MEDITECH was transitioning its corporate software to Google Workspace, so the development team saw an opportunity to migrate workloads hosted onsite to Google Cloud.
"We knew we needed to make the move to a cloud native environment to keep up with our own expectations for how fast we could deliver new solutions."
—Brett Strasnick, Director of Cloud Services at MEDITECHA secure cloud environment for clinician-centered technology
MEDITECH was able to migrate more than 2,000 VMs from its on-premise servers to Google Cloud on-time and under budget. One of the major reasons for the shift was increasing data storage without having to worry about purchasing new physical storage. By migrating its data to Cloud Storage, MEDITECH has been able to share the flexibility and scalability of cloud data management with its customers. Being able to spin storage up or down means the team can rent cloud storage to test and roll out new solutions without having to provision and commit to completely new physical servers.
Many of its customers have their own onsite servers that make it difficult to manage ever-growing patient records and efficiently share patient information across locations. The transition to Google Cloud enabled the MEDITECH Cloud Platform, a series of cloud-native solutions that MEDITECH developed to support physicians with technology throughout health systems.
Customers can now use MEDITECH’s product suite for virtual patient communications, virtual appointments, a mobile app for their clinical teams, and more. "The migration relieves a lot of the burden on our customers because Cloud Storage offers so much space. Our customers are also supported with access capabilities, security, credentialing, and the list goes on," said Strasnick.
MEDITECH has been able to alleviate some of its customers’ onsite storage strain by supplementing their work with MEDITECH’s own secure cloud storage. MEDITECH’s EHR solutions continue to support connectivity across physical locations by improving load times and giving physicians access to data faster. This is especially important for patients that may visit different hospitals in their area to see different specialists. Improving access to patient health records regardless of location helps MEDITECH achieve its goal of giving access to clinicians across the clinic, campus, and community while still meeting the high standards for protecting medical information.
"The migration relieves a lot of the burden on our customers because Cloud Storage offers so much space. Our customers are also supported with access capabilities, security, credentialing, and the list goes on."
—Brett Strasnick, Director of Cloud Services at MEDITECHEmpowering physicians to focus on patient care
Moving to Google Cloud has helped MEDITECH double down on supporting its end users. Migrating MEDITECH’s app development environment to Google Cloud gave the company a more efficient way to develop new applications like the Expanse Now physician app so doctors can reference patient charts, update prescriptions, or check lab results at any time from their mobile devices. These charts are also customizable, so care teams can rearrange charts to meet their own preferences and workflows.
Healthcare professionals from private practices to regional hospital networks are better able to keep their attention focused on supporting patients. One of MEDITECH’s customers, Boone Hospital Center in Columbia, MO, used MEDITECH’s new cloud infrastructure to migrate 150 software systems, replace 2,400 workstations, and launch MEDITECH’s Expanse EHR in its 400-bed hospital in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"With Google Cloud, we have more granular monitoring which means we can see if there are issues with our own environments or a customer’s environment. We can get alerts about uptime or storage space and address problems early," said Strasnick. "Running more reliably helps our customers and improves care for their patients." Unifying the EHR experience with a full suite of cloud software solutions is helping increase the availability of care resources while reducing the cognitive load that can come with parsing massive files of patient data.
"With Google Cloud, we have more granular monitoring, so we can see if there are issues with our environments or our customers’ environments. We get alerts about uptime or storage space and address problems early. Running more reliably helps my team, helps our customers, and improves care for their patients."
—Brett Strasnick, Director of Cloud Services at MEDITECHHaving more flexibility in designing applications also gave MEDITECH room to integrate with other solutions. For example, one third-party tool the team has been able to connect to MEDITECH Expanse aggregates a patient’s wellness into an overall health score that doctors can use as a starting point for care. "Reducing the number of clicks it takes a doctor to find information helps reduce clinical burnout. The more we can automate clinical decision support, the lighter the cognitive burden on the provider, and the better prepared they are to help patients," says Strasnick.
The company’s commitment to innovation also means that these solutions are only one step in an ongoing mission to support healthcare teams. "This is what we mean when we talk about anticipating what the industry needs, and Google Cloud is helping us do it," shared Strasnick. As MEDITECH looks toward the future, it continues to find new tools and solutions that will deliver on its mission to provide cutting edge technology to physicians safely, effectively, and quickly.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About MEDITECH
MEDITECH wants to help build a world in which every patient can access their health information and participate in their own care. It develops electronic health record (EHR) solutions to simplify and enhance clinicians' interactions with patients and technologies that encourage human connection.