An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure

There has been little debate as to the value of electronic health records (EHRs) in enabling providers to offer informed treatment choices in a quick and thorough manner. Patient history in these records has helped healthcare professionals recognize symptom trends, diagnose possible conditions, and reduce safety risks based on prescription drug interactions. So it is probably no surprise that HealthIT.gov reports the vast majority—96 percent—of acute care hospitals have adopted basic EHRs for their staff.  

Access to these records is a critical element of swift, safe, and secure treatment for patients. As the healthcare staff moves throughout their hospital campus, maintaining access to all the information they need to perform their jobs can be challenging. Access to applications, patient data, and treatment options is needed whether they are using a cart on wheels (COW) at the patient’s bedside, on their way to surgery for another patient, or racing between buildings on a healthcare campus. An often-chosen IT method of safe, secure access to healthcare applications is virtual desktop interfaces (VDIs). This enables password-protected, encrypted access to EHR and other patient-impacting applications that complies with HIPAA and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) regulations.

The VDI market is projected to have a 20 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2022 and 2030 and could reach over $78 billion in value. Even before the COVID pandemic made remote access to patient records more important, 2019 statistics showed more than 47 percent of healthcare facilities had already adopted VDI services.   

Despite undisputed benefits of VDI in healthcare, its use adds another layer of complexity to healthcare application access. It also has the potential to be a blind spot for proactive performance management and troubleshooting issues that may arise from medical staff in their regular use of EHR applications as well as other critical applications such as imaging, telemedicine, and electronic prescription services.  

Healthcare professionals know the value of preventive medicine, staying healthy, and following good lifestyle choices. So when one particular hospital was planning a strategic data center transformation, the IT staff built-in proactive performance management and monitoring visibility to stay ahead of potential issues that could impact the health, availability, and performance of their Citrix VDI and Epic EHR applications. Diagnosing the true source of emerging slowdowns or obstacles is faster and may avoid enterprise-wide impact thanks to the holistic visibility of NETSCOUT’s nGeniusONE network and application performance management solutions.

See how this hospital helped maintain the health, availability, and performance of its newly transformed data center.

To learn more about how NETSCOUT can help assure healthcare application performance, listen to our recent webinar Solving Visibility Challenges in Hospitals to Ensure Quality Patient Care.