Korean Medical Center Adopting IBM Smarter Computing

IBM Corp. announced that the Soon Chun Hyang University
Hospital has embraced the company’s smarter computing approach to IT to
build the country’s first integrated hospital infrastructure.

The hardware and software solution, which was selected over bids by
HP and Hitachi, is designed to enable the growing medical center to cull
insight from swelling volumes of patient data and provide it to
doctors, nurses, clinical laboratories and insurance institutions. As a result,
the hospital expects to improve patient care by being able
to determine and dispense the most appropriate treatments more clearly and
quickly than in the past.

Since Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital was founded in 1972 it has
grown into a major healthcare institution that operates 2,890 beds in four
different locations: Seoul, Bucheon, ChunAn, and Kumi. Two years ago it
launched an electronic medical records project that was aimed at enhancing the
use of patient data and reducing fragmentation of medical information.

IBM Korea was chosen for this project to create a workload optimized
system that was able to support doctors and other health providers in all four
locations, and enable them all to work together to improve patient care and
accountability.

"We wanted to provide a
powerful platform that made it easier to develop and integrate tools supporting
physicians’ decision-making processes," said Yoon, Soo Keun, MD at
Dongeun Information Technology – IT subsidiary of Soon Chun Hyang University
Hospital. "The new IBM system will
be more efficient and capable to quickly access data stored in many different
formats and multiple locations."

Under the agreement signed in December 2011, IBM is delivering a range of technologies from processing and storage to virtualization. Among
the many systems to be implemented will be IBM Power 780 and 740 systems
equipped with PowerVM virtualization; System x3650 M3 systems; System
Storage DS8000 high capacity storage, Storwize V7000 Unified Storage
Systems, and more. All told, the new infrastructure will be capable of
handling more than 100TB of data (the approximate equivalent of more than 650
billion photos on Facebook).

The hospital will leverage the new infrastructure to host a
next-generation integrated medical information system called ‘SU-III Project’
which establishes a single electronic medical records system with a single
database.

In addition to the new infrastructure, PowerVM virtualization
technology will enable a more dynamic and flexible platform that can facilitate
data sharing between the hospital branches more swiftly, while optimizing
system utilization and keeping costs under control. After the project is
completed the hospital’s IT infrastructure will be managed out of one main
medical information center in Bucheon.

"Applying advanced
technologies in academic hospitals such as Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital
holds the potential to turn them into regional healthcare hotspots,"
said Lee, Jang Suk, Director, IBM Korea. "Going forward with Korea’s first integrated hospital infrastructure
system, Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital will pave the way towards smarter
healthcare, elevating patient convenience and satisfaction, while delivering
better economics."