SOUTHERN DISTRICT HEALTH BOARD (SDHB) CASE STUDY

Southern District Health Board (SDHB) partnered with STATE3 to help them get visibility of their disparate systems, enabling them to get in control, manage change and make decisions based on facts and knowledge.

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Key Challenges

​SDHB were managing more than 400 technology systems, including servers, applications and clinical systems.  They had a lack of visibility of how the systems worked together; if they were up to date with their vendor support and maintenance contracts; or if legacy systems were coming out of support and needed a plan to replace.  This was especially important for them as keeping on top of security and risk management.

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This lack of visibility of how the systems interconnected made it hard for them to identify the impact of potential changes, both on other systems and on the clinical users and patients.  

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With a new hospital being built in Dunedin, decisions needed making around future technology requirements.  The team realised they needed more understanding of what they had today before they could make decisions about future needs.   

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Any time the team pulled information together they were frustrated with how  inefficient and time consuming it was.  Information was held in various locations and in different formats, such as Excel and Visio.  Information was often out of date and didn’t provide confidence to the team in their decision making.  Their systems limited access to who could see the information and this added to the inefficiencies, meaning even vendors couldn’t access information about their own service contracts! 

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The Solution

​STATE3 firstly worked with the SDHB team to map and understand the whole application landscape. They prioritised the top three application categories, with core clinical systems being first, before rolling out to the rest of the systems.

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STATE3 joined the dots between the different systems and how they work together, providing a single view of the world in a “single pane of glass”.  SDHB now has one view of all their technology - from applications to infrastructure.   

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'STATE3 took a real partnership approach with us  we worked with them, not for them,'

said Craig Young, Technical Architect 

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'They are a New Zealand company - they understand how we work and our needs and it never felt like a cookie-cutter approach.'​

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A Single Pane of Glass​

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Results

​SDHB are excited by what they can now do and have seen immediate results.

  

They now have one view of all the systems - displayed visually.  A “single pane of glass” to explain and demonstrate the complexity and interactions between systems.  This has enabled them to have clarity and confidence about what they need to do, as they have a deeper understanding of their systems, can quickly identify gaps and have now developed a roadmap and priorities.

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In terms of impact on the whole of the DHB community, SDHB now experiences less system outages when changes to one system have unintended consequences on others.

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The team now feel much more in control - a couple of clicks gives them access to real-time information.  This has saved time in terms of searching for information and means they are able to respond more quickly to requests.  Access and visibility is now shared across more people, including vendors - which has meant information flow and communication efficiencies have greatly improved.  They can now easily monitor SLAs (service level agreements) and contracts, including the payment schedules and cost centres and are now using this information for their budget planning and review meetings.  

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The technology team has also found it easier to communicate to the senior leadership team by providing information visually, with confidence that it is correct and up to date.  

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Jack Devereux, Digital Relationships Manager, says they it is great to know they are now using a best practise approach;

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'Before when we made changes to the system we had to guess at the impact.  Now we KNOW!  This is decision making based on facts.'  

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Contact us now to find out how STATE3 Enterprise can help you get visibility and control.