Business Edge Observability Is the Rx

Patients go to the facility where the doctor or treatment care they need is located. It might be a hospital, a medical building, an urgent care facility, or a clinic. Regardless of location, the expectation has always been a quality patient care experience: The medical professional they are dealing with will be able to see their healthcare records quickly, review imaging content for diagnosis clearly, and provide updates on treatment plans and next steps in a timely manner.

Digital Transformations in Healthcare

For years, there has been a great deal of focus on digital transformations in healthcare to ensure the latest IT technology as well as diagnostic and treatment advancements. As electronic health records (EHRs), imaging, e-prescription, and telehealth applications and services were implemented, expansion of healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) devices (aka Internet of Medical Things [IoMT]) was also exploding. This has equated to strong growth in IT spending by the healthcare industry. In fact,  IT spending in the healthcare market from 2024 to 2031 is projected to grow from $276 billion to $785 billion—a 15.4 percent capitalized annual growth rate (CAGR).

The goals of improvements in networking and application services have first and foremost been to deliver patient care swiftly, safely, and securely. And there are other benefits to these digital transformations as well, including staff efficiencies, employee productivity, and improvements in patient experience. Telehealth services, mobile apps, remote patient monitoring, and patient portals are just a few examples.

Healthcare Extends Patient Care with Remote Locations

Network expansions and improvements have also made it possible to deliver quality patient care in remote clinics, medical buildings, and even in rural locations with remote access to IT resources. This helps bring talented medical providers and equipment closer to patients. Some of the services used in these locations may continue to be hosted in the healthcare provider’s private data center. However, more and more applications are now offered as software as a service (SaaS) or have moved to the cloud for easier accessibility from anywhere. These may include EHRs, imaging, e-prescriptions, and telehealth services, for instance. Additionally, many organizations leverage unified communications as a service (UCaaS) for teleconferencing services, instant messaging, and phone calls that are hosted in the cloud. In many ways, the COVID pandemic not only made telehealth a mainstream service, but it also turned Zoom, Webex, and Microsoft Teams into household names.  

Performance and Availability Challenges Impacting Healthcare

Access to all of these services for doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other healthcare workers from their remote locations is typically over the internet, bypassing data centers where there may be network observability to cover troubleshooting and performance management objectives. The CrowdStrike outage in June 2024 laid bare the vulnerabilities in many healthcare networks. For hours, and in some cases days, those networks were unable to access patient records, set appointments, or conduct telehealth appointments; a number of them were even brought to a complete halt. This delayed diagnosis and treatment for many patients.

Although CrowdStrike had an unusual, global impact, healthcare organizations deal with application slowdowns, network latency, login problems, and/or slow internet services every day. Some have suffered more significant disruptions following technology upgrades, application migrations, and/or system maintenance. For remote medical offices and clinics, these slowdowns and disruptions are not simply frustrating; they can have a direct impact on patient care. As one of the actionable steps that healthcare organizations can take to build business resiliency, IT leaders and experts recommend that healthcare IT teams should invest in continuous monitoring.

The Need for Network Observability

Network observability has been a strategic effort by many healthcare organizations worldwide, particularly in their private data centers. However, a visibility gap exists in many of their remote medical buildings, clinics, and urgent care facilities. Continuous monitoring at the business edge—where on-site IT resources for troubleshooting are limited—is essential. Centralized IT teams need end-to-end visibility as a proactive approach against potential disruptions and when problems do emerge. It is essential that they have the in-depth details and analysis necessary to quickly identify and resolve the problem wherever it may lie across the ecosystem. After all, swift, safe patient treatment depends on it.

NETSCOUT recently introduced new solutions specifically targeted at remote office locations. See how this NETSCOUT customer added observability to successfully troubleshoot and resolve a reported problem for one of its medical clinics dealing with an intermittent EHR latency problem.

See how one organization achieved enhanced observability in its healthcare environment to include its remote medical offices.