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

www.calgaryhealthregion.ca

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

www.rxwave.com

“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