Healthcare Provider UZ Leuven in Belgium Speeds Collaboration of 17 Hospitals

“NetApp All Flash FAS has enabled us to quickly process radiology images, patient records, test results, and e-mail, as well as manage our 50% data growth each year,” said Reinoud Reynders.

Reynders is the IT manager of infrastructure and operations at UZ Leuven.

“In addition, working with NetApp has strengthened our cloud services,” he said, “making it possible for us to move, manage, and protect 6PB of critical patient data, as well as roll out new features across 17 hospitals within business hours – with no downtime.”

UZ Leuven is the largest healthcare provider in Belgium and is one of the most respected medical research facilities in Europe. Access to accurate and timely patient information is critical to providing the right diagnosis, treatments, and care.

Having grown from 2,000 to 9,000 beds, UZ Leuven expects to exceed 12,000 beds soon. With this expansion, new patient data must be made available across hospitals for real-time collaboration while the infrastructure handles exponential growth behind the scenes without risk of downtime.

UZ Leuven initially turned to NetApp, Inc. in 2000 to help scale the storage of the healthcare organization’s radiology images. Since then, the organization has worked with NetApp to support all of UZ Leuven’s storage needs, including virtual desktops and, most recently, an SAP ASE clinical database, by deploying NetApp All Flash FAS arrays. These arrays run NetApp ONTAP data management software, enabling the hospitals to move, manage, and protect patient data across flash, disk, and cloud – without disrupting the quality of care. Hospitals that rely on UZ Leuven’s cloud services now benefit from increased flexibility, accelerated application performance, and reduced overhead.

With the new solution, UZ Leuven and nexuz health can:

• Provide patient care closer to home while doctors and specialists access results in real time.
• Offer higher-quality care by using a single patient record, updated in real time.
• Improve their ability to conduct big data analysis with patient data and to alert physicians about abnormalities.
• Accommodate more than 50% annual data growth.
• Reduce administration time.
• Accelerate recovery time.