Canterbury DHB moves to hybrid cloud

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eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Canterbury District Health Board is moving to a hybrid cloud approach to help free up staff time, giving clinical staff more time to care for patients.

Canterbury DHB chief digital officer Stella Ward spoke at the May Techie Brekkie event in Christchurch as part of Techweek19 about the DHB’s use of a number of cloud technology platforms.

The DHB is adopting a hybrid cloud approach, as some activity needs to stay in the server rooms in the basement of Christchurch Hospital, and the DHB already has a lot of activity in the private cloud, she said.

It is now taking advantage of opportunities to make use of public cloud with Microsoft Azure and AWS, in collaboration with Cloud Technology Partners.

As host of ths South Island’s regional solutions, a key benefit of using the public cloud is increased resilience and robustness of disaster recovery, she explained.

Ward said users will not notice the hybrid approach, but will have a seamless experience of the applications they are using, wherever they are hosted.

The Deloitte Assist Technology being trialled at the DHB is hosted on a private cloud in Australia.

The DHB’s human resources portal, called Max, has “taken paper out of recruitment processes, expense claims and leave, and saved significant time across the system and improved the experience of staff and how they interact with HR,” Ward told attendees.

Cloud enables a more agile way of working, such as the deployment of a fully mobile orderlies app over nine weeks, which has had “phenomenal uptake”, she said.

The DHB embarked on an aggressive year-long project to migrate to a hybrid cloud environment, which will increase speed and agility and free up staff in the Information Services Group to do more added-value work, she explained.

Cloud Technology Partners’ vice president of strategic accounts Trisha Rozas told Techie Brekkie attendees that a key part of the transformation programme at Canterbury involved training local IT staff to manage the environment.

She said the two organisations built a Minimum Viable Cloud platform and took an iterative approach to start moving applications to this cloud platform.

They identified the first three Canterbury DHB applications to move to the cloud. Additionally, Cloud Technology Partners and Canterbury DHB have established a Cloud Business Office and pulled in people from a range of teams, such as finance, procurement and legal, to ensure everyone understands how to work in the cloud.

Rozas said the project has been successful due to executive vision and support. They hold daily stand-ups with the technical teams and operate as a single project team, co-locating Cloud Technology Partners and ISG staff in one place.

Lessons learned include the need to establish a communications plan early on for both internal and external communications.

The need for speed must be balanced against the need to enable local information technology staff to learn and support the new cloud environment after the 12-month project, she explained.

“Addressing vendor contracts is critical,” says Rozas. “Bringing vendors into the loop early and showing technical designs and ensuring they are brought into the process, so you’re well supported going forward.”

The government’s direction is that all public services should think about moving to the cloud, in order to achieve greater efficiencies, better security, and greater choice and agility for implementing solutions.

The Department of Internal Affairs has also encouraged DHBs to accelerate their adoption of cloud, but it takes “serious work” to get there, Ward said.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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