From an outdated infrastructure to innovative care with BPSOLUTIONS

Haga Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in the Netherlands. Although IT is not part of the core business of a healthcare institution, it is essential in facilitating good healthcare. That puts pressure on an IT infrastructure and the department that has to manage it. Errors or downtime can have disastrous consequences, because in a hospital it’s all about human lives. Haga’s IT Manager Raymond van den Berg is well aware of this. Since he joined in 2009, he has been working with BPSOLUTIONS as one of the partners involved in the IT transformation to realize a reliable infrastructure. This means that Van Den Berg and his team can now focus on their most important activities: planning for innovation and translating technology into care.

In this case, Raymond van den Berg explains the intensive collaboration with BPSOLUTIONS: from the necessary hospital innovation to proactive monitoring and new applications that support healthcare. Read here how BPSOLUTIONS helped Haga Hospital to become smarter.

“My department now mainly does what it does best: we make plans for innovation and make the transition from technology to care.”

Haga Innovates: a huge business case

After ten years of being responsible for the IT policy at Haga Hospital, IT Manager Raymond van den Berg is retiring. Looking back at his work, he saw the hospital go through a real metamorphosis. Van den Berg explains: “When I started here ten years ago, we started a program called” Haga Renews “. That was a huge business case: the hospital was rebuilt, the care processes were optimized, new care equipment was purchased and our IT infrastructure was tackled.

He continues: “In order to let the hospital make the desired innovation, we wanted to renew everything: the cabling (both in and above ground), the workplaces and the Electronic Patient Record (EPD), but also our server, storage, LAN, WLAN; really everything. ”All these new systems had to be purchased, installed and connected to each other. Such a big job quickly becomes unmanageable, Van den Berg thought. “You simply cannot do this alone as a hospital’s IT department: it is not our core business. We needed a party with IT knowledge. ”

“You can’t simply do such a big job on your own as a hospital department. We needed a knowledgeable partner.”

Getting started with a knowledge partner

To support Haga Hospital in this innovation process, BPSOLUTIONS was chosen as a knowledge partner. This is partly because BPSOLUTIONS was already involved with Haga Hospital as an infrastructure supplier. Van den Berg about this choice: “We didn’t want to do it alone, but still want to be in control of the change process. That is why we have opted for co-sourcing: we have accepted the challenge with BPSOLUTIONS as an IT partner. I didn’t know the party yet when I started working, but from the discussions with my colleagues and BPSolutions themselves, they turned out to be the best choice to implement the plans. ”Both parties discussed the step-by-step approach of this enormous job . “It was not a question of just putting some hardware down and running it. It was a long-term collaboration, “says van den Berg. Van den Berg had subdivided all work to be performed into a color scheme, with the help of IHA (ICT Health Assessment). Red tasks still had to be done, the yellow tasks were “in progress”, we simply did not have gray and green was “executed”. Van den Berg: “When BPSOLUTIONS was involved in this job, only one component was completely green. It was one big red, yellow and gray field.”

More than IT infrastructure

Moreover, it became clear that the job involved more than just the implementation of a number of infrastructure components: management, process optimization and applications also played a major role. At the time of entering as a partner, BPSOLUTIONS was mainly focused on infrastructure and services, but was prepared to move with Haga Hospital. “You could say that our partnership has also changed BPSOLUTIONS,” says Van den Berg.

The infrastructure was the first to be tackled during the process. For example, an IBM server environment was created to support the SAP platform. Van den Berg: “A beautiful RamSan storage environment has been added. It is incredibly fast, I am still raving about this.” After the implementation of the various hardware environments, it was the turn of the SAP application itself. Van den Berg says about this: “The infrastructure itself looked good, but of course we were not there yet. SAP is an excellent product, only this is a solution that does not change easily. The platform naturally had to be set up in the way we work. Here “We needed BPSOLUTIONS for that. You could feel that click right away. You do business with people, not with a company. I find that very important, especially if you enter into such a co-sourcing construction.”

“At BPSOLUTIONS you do business with people, not with a company.”

The effect of co-sourcing

What has this long-term co-sourcing relationship Raymond van den Berg delivered? “The infrastructure was rigorously renewed in those years and is now working properly. This allows the Haga Hospital to deliver the care it wants to deliver. ”A lot has changed for the IT department itself:“ My department now mainly does what it does best. We make plans for innovation and make the transition from technology to care. We are in charge and are the communication partner for our care providers. We are not in control: BPSOLUTIONS does that. You shouldn’t want that at all as the IT department of a hospital. BPSOLUTIONS understands much better how our IT works. ”BPSOLUTIONS provides Haga 24/7 support. This allows it to act solution-oriented. Van den Berg: “An example: we once had an application server within the SAP environment that suddenly went out. We have a total of five application servers and thought: oh well, we still have four that work well. Then we still called. BPSOLUTIONS immediately said: don’t do anthing, we are on our way. We need that. When something doesn’t work, there might be lives on the line. BPSOLUTIONS can solve that because it knows exactly what can and must be done in our IT infrastructure.”

Proactive monitoring

Moreover, BPSOLUTIONS now proactively monitors the IT processes of the Haga Hospital. Van den Berg says about this: “We really don’t have to worry about it. After ten years, all processes are reasonably worn out. They are responsible for the complete management of, among other things, the IBM and Intel platforms, but also in application environments in which there is collaboration with other IT partners of the hospital. We occasionally take a look at the screens, but it is not a necessity for us. If a component exhibits deviant behavior, with the possibility of an error or failure, BPSOLUTIONS will respond immediately. They have often solved it before we realize that something has gone wrong. ”

“”BPSOLUTIONS has often solved it before we realize that something has gone wrong.”

Data analytics at the Emergency Room

Innovative ideas continue to flow from the partnership of BPSOLUTIONS and the Haga Hospital. When a patient arrives at the emergency room, he or she often does not know how long the waiting time for treatment is. BPSOLUTIONS and the Haga Hospital recently implemented a solution for this. Van den Berg: “It is naturally annoying for patients that they do not know exactly when they can be helped. Their frustration is often expressed by the practitioners. BPSOLUTIONS then started to think about how we could ease this process.”

Huge amounts of data are collected within the Haga Hospital. This includes historical EPD data such as information about patients, the severity of the complaints and treatments, but also other factors that determine the pressure in the hospital. These include staffing, specific weather conditions, days of the week or events. Van den Berg: “BPSolutions has built an Artificial Intelligence application that analyzes all this data. Based on this, it makes an accurate prediction about the waiting time for the emergency department. That way the patient immediately knows where he or she stands.”

This naturally includes a lot of privacy-sensitive data about patients and syndromes. Strict rules apply to this. Van den Berg: “This says something about our partnership with BPSOLUTIONS: we trust them with this, among other things through the NEN 7510 certification that is specifically aimed at healthcare.”

The secret of  10 years partnership: dare to discuss

BPSOLUTIONS has been the reliable partner of the Haga Hospital for more than ten years. Van den Berg: “You do business with people, not with a company. I have had several intense discussions with our BPSOLUTIONS advisers. About the course to be taken, about which solutions suit us best, about how we deal with their products. ”Van den Berg believes that this ensures that BPSOLUTIONS fits as well as a partner:“ You do not come to them for a environment, after which the stocking is finished. They really think along with you and dare to say it when we miss the point with our ideas. That happened in the past, before I took office: after all, we started working with the solution we had in mind, while BPSOLUTIONS warned us not to do it. Well, we knew that. Now BPSOLUTIONS often has the last word, while as a self-willed Rotterdammer I proposed something different. After all those discussions, they are still our partner. Why? They simply have the most knowledge of it and dare to resist if they think we are making a mistake. They are not part of our IT chain: they are part of it. ”

“BPSOLUTIONS dare to say when we are wrong.”