iBOMA’s Case Study—Health Care
Calgary Health Region – Chronic Disease Management Information System
CaStudy—Health Care
The Calgary Health Region is an integrated, publicly
funded health care system serving a population of one
million people in
Calgary
and the surrounding commu-
nities in the
province
of
Alberta
,
Canada
. The Region
operates three urban adult hospitals and one pediatric
hospital in
Calgary
as well as several community hospi-
tals in satellite communities around the city, comprising
more than 1,800 acute care beds. The Region provides
a full range of acute care services as well as mental
health, public health and long term care health ser-
vices.
Objective
The Calgary Health Region’s Chronic Disease Manage-
ment Information System (CDMIS) is accessed by ap-
proximately five hundred Chronic Diseases Health
Workers who require on-line access to patient records,
clinical data, lab results, and drug databases while pro-
viding on-site care for patients with chronic diseases.
The organization sought a way to improve access time
to this application over mobile devices. The CDMIS
provides rich content that was initially developed for
high speed networks. Delivered through a cellular data
network, such as GPRS, 1XRTT, or Edge, a typical por-
tal page required in excess of two and half (2.5) min-
utes to download. Mobile users were unable to access
the application over cellular networks in a timely man-
ner and productivity was being adversely impacted.
Solution Description
The Calgary Health Region has currently provided over
100 health professionals with laptop computers fitted
with Sony Ericsson EDGE PC Cards that communicate
across the Rogers Wireless GPRS/EDGE network. Ena-
bling health professionals to provide patient services in
a mobile environment is a key initiative of the
Calgary
Health Region’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) strat-
egy.
The Calgary Health Region, together with IBM, has
developed an information portal to assist health profes-
sionals caring for patients with chronic diseases, re-
ferred to as the Chronic Disease Management Informa-
tion System (CDMIS). The CDMIS provides efficient
access to disease specific information for each patient
enabling timely decisions as well as efficient resources
allocation. Health professionals can access the portal
to obtain patient records, clinical data, lab results, and
drug databases while providing on-site care for
patients with chronic diseases.
Calgary
Health Region
Company Description
•
The Calgary Health Region is an integrated,
publicly funded health care system serving a
population of one million people in
Calgary
and the surrounding communities in the
province
of
Alberta
,
Canada
. The Region
operates three urban adult hospitals and
one pediatric hospital in
Calgary
as well as
several community hospitals in satellite
communities around the city, comprising
more than 1,800 acute care beds.
Objective
•
Provide access to the Chronic Disease Man-
agement Information System (CDMIS) to
mobile health professionals
•
Deliver better patient care
•
Enable efficiency in the work flow of mobile
health professionals by reducing network
access delays over the cellular network
Solution Description
•
100+ mobile health professionals through-
out
Calgary
and area are provided with lap-
top computers fitted with EDGE PC Cards
with transmit and receive data wirelessly
over the
Rogers
Wireless EDGE Network
•
The CHR and IBM develop an information
portal (CDMIS) to assist health professionals
caring for patients with chronic illnesses.
•
CHR deploys iBOMA at their Foothills Net-
work centre to accelerate access to the
CDMIS and other applications for all mobile
workers
Results
•
Mobile access to the CDMIS portal de-
creases to 20 seconds from the previous
time of 2.5 minutes, making this application
feasible in a mobile environment
•
Health professionals are able to provide
more efficient and a higher quality of patient
care in the
Calgary
region.
Chronic diseases are the leading causes of
death and disability worldwide and constitute
the major demand on the Canadian health care
system. The CDMIS is critical for clinical deci-
sion making: helping to speed the flow of infor-
mation which is critical to saving lives. As the
instances of chronic illnesses rise, having timely
access to complete and consistent patient re-
cords and medical information become a neces-
sary component to providing consistent and er-
ror free patient care while increasing productiv-
ity and alleviating pressure from
Calgary
's busy
emergency departments and inpatient services.
It was a necessity to enable efficient access to
this application for mobile and fixed users alike.
In March 2004, the CHR implemented the Intel-
ligent Bandwidth Optimization Management Ap-
pliance (iBOMA) solution to enhance mobile ac-
cess for its Chronic Disease Management Infor-
mation System (CDMIS). iBOMA was imple-
mented at the
Foothills
Hospital
network centre,
to accelerate wireless access to the CDMIS for
all users.
Results
The initiative was deemed successful upon im-
plementation. Using iBOMA to accelerate wire-
less network access over the Rogers Wireless
network, for all CHR mobile workers, enabled an
efficiency in accessing applications that could
not be achieved without it. A key part of the
CDMIS initiative was to allow access to the ap-
plication to mobile health professionals traveling
to doctor’s offices, community centres and pa-
tient homes to provide on-site care. The CHR
soon discovered that the CDMIS was not easy to
access over existing cellular data networks due
to its size. Initially, it was taking in excess of
two and a half minutes to access the system.
Since using iBOMA, access takes as little as 20
seconds.
iBOMA has a proven record in enabling enter-
prises and service providers such as ISPs, Car-
rier and ASPs to deliver data services substan-
tially faster over existing mobile network infra-
structure. By deploying iBOMA, success was
instantaneous with the CDMIS access time ex-
pedited to twenty (20) seconds, enabling this
application to be a productive tool for the mo-
bile health professional.
Supporting Partners
The following partners played an integral
role in this iBOMA deployment.
RxWave International Inc.
Suite 486, 3553—31st Street NW
Calgary
,
AB
,
Canada
T2L 2K7
Ph: 1.403.680.1589
Fx: 1.403.282.1238
“I have worked with iBOMA’s caching and
compression technology in major accounts
that have installed extensive mobile data so-
lutions. After installing iBOMA the application
and user experience improvement was ten-
fold. I would recommend iBOMA to any en-
terprise who is looking to optimize the per-
formance of their mobile data solution and
enable greater productivity for their mobile
workforce.”
– Patrick Hinds, Data Solutions Manager,
Rogers
Wireless