Delivering health and social services to more than 4.3 million people in Ireland, the Health Service Executive (HSE) faces the significant challenge of meeting the varied service needs of a growing population, while achieving strict cost control objectives. The organisation has a strong internal ICT competency and for the past number of years has leveraged the resources of trusted partners to host selected HSE applications, leaving its own team free to focus on ICT issues of strategic importance.

In 2008, when the HSE went to the market to re-tender for hosting services, it did so with a clear vision of its ICT strategy, and needed a partner who could help it deliver on its objectives. The concept was to create Ireland's first National Health Data Centre, creating a robust and highly secure platform which could house all current and future ICT systems for HSE hospitals and health service offices nationwide. The Centre would also become home to a growing range of services coming online, including the HSE's upcoming national medical imaging project. After considering its options, the HSE chose eircom.

"The success of the HSE ICT Strategy depends on the provision of a robust platform and architecture, upon which critical services can be better managed,” says Gerard Hurl, National ICT Director, HSE. “The establishment of the National Health Data Centre in partnership with eircom is significant as it not only provides a best in class platform to help us to deliver on this objective, but also meets our cost and efficiency targets.”

The scale and calibre of eircom's Clonshaugh facility, Ireland's newest and most state-of-the-art hosting and managed services datacentre, also delivered vital reassurance to the HSE. "Clonshaugh is obviously an extremely advanced facility and uses some new technologies, and some green techniques like free to air cooling, which help us control our energy costs," said Pat Thornton, General Manager for Network and Security Operations, HSE. "We first looked at the Clonshaugh facility when it was in development, and we've seen it go from a shell to its new, shiny operational self.”

eircom programme management delivers a risk-managed transition for HSE

While the HSE was confident that using eircom represented the best technical and commercial choice, awarding the contract to eircom meant a number of essential applications needed to be transferred seamlessly from the HSE’s previous data centre partner into the eircom managed services data centre in Clonshaugh.

Essential hospital clinical applications, administrative and e-mail systems cannot be off-line for any length of time without impacting the 24/7 operations of HSE's internal clients. The eircom programme management team was tasked with working in close partnership with the HSE to effect the complete and efficient changeover of all applications, while ensuring an absolute minimum of downtime for end-users and protecting the security of sensitive health data at all times.

Simultaneously, the two organisations cooperated closely to architect the new National Health Data Centre to ensure it met all essential requirements for scalability, security, data privacy, availability, connectivity and resilience. A strong working relationship between eircom and HSE delivered a successful transition and launch of the Centre in June 2009:

• Efficient relocation of an extensive ICT infrastructure: More than 200 servers across 40 racks were in scope for installation into Clonshaugh, with the majority of these being transitioned from the existing data centre.
• Discovery process contributes to project success: eircom’s extensive discovery process detailed inventory and support requirements and helped deliver an efficient transition.
• Project segmentation ensures a manageable transition: eircom programme managers phased the migration of critical systems and applications into nine separate moves, helping minimise the impact on end-users and achieve optimal efficiencies at the new Centre as incoming systems were brought online. Each of the nine moves was scoped as an individual project, with specific targets and discrete signoff.
• Maximum security for sensitive health data: basing its new Centre at Clonshaugh allows the HSE to benefit from the physical security and world-class resources of the eircom managed services centre, and delivers the best possible peace of mind for all HSE stakeholders as critical clinical and patient data is protected. Best-in-class ICT security protocols employed by eircom during transition and installation also delivered essential protection for sensitive data.
• Flexible working methods protect users against downtime: To help meet the HSE's target of zero downtime for users, eircom strove to deliver maximum flexibility on working methods, concentrating the majority of transition work into weekend and out-of-hour timeframes.