INDUSTRY

The Solaris 10 Operating System and UltraSPARC Sun Fire Servers Power Premier Teaching Hospital's Critical Patient Information and Financial Systems: Sun Microsystems today announced that Rush University Medical Center in Chicago has deployed a Sun technology infrastructure to run a critical new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. The Sun system, comprised of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), UltraSPARC IV+ processor-based Sun Fire servers and Sun StorageTek solutions, provides the rigorous high-availability environment required for the hospital's patient information system from Epic Systems Corporation. Rush University Medical Center, a leading teaching and research hospital, chose Sun over other vendors principally for the superior reliability and price/performance of the Sun Solaris 10 OS and UltraSPARC system. The EMR system Rush University Medical Center is deploying from Epic captures all clinical, financial, and operational data related to a patient and organizes it into a consistent record accessible to users across the care continuum at the hospital. With a single, integrated record combining information from radiology, cardiology, surgery, labs, pharmacy and other departments, doctors are able to make more well-informed decisions about patient care. The Sun powered system also streamlines non-medical operations for the hospital, helping to improve the healthcare provider's financial performance and regulatory compliance. "Rush University Medical Center is deeply committed to continuously improving patient care. That's why we made a major investment in upgrading our EMR system and why we entrusted the IT infrastructure to Sun," said Michael Sorensen, senior director of IT at Rush University Medical Center. "Sun's technology performance combined with the ability to provide a complete solution including operating system, servers, storage, support and professional services made it clear that Sun was the partner we wanted for this essential initiative." Return on investment and upfront cost were also decisive factors. By taking advantage of Sun promotions, Rush University Medical Center received discounts of up to 50 percent on its hardware purchases. In addition, Rush University Medical Center will save significantly on operational costs over its previous mainframe environment. "What Rush University Medical Center is doing to break down information silos and streamline data flow at the hospital is fundamental to the improvement of patient safety and the reduction of medical errors," said Joerg Schwarz, Director of healthcare & Life Sciences, Sun Microsystems. "But an excellent EMR system such as Epic needs a reliable and secure IT infrastructure to provide 24x7x365 service. Sun's highly available server and storage products help to ensure that an EMR system can operate at its full potential within the given IT budget, and thus delivers on the promise of better healthcare." Building on decades of experience working with hospitals, clinics and insurers, Sun is leveraging its leading-edge technologies to create and deploy complete healthcare infrastructure solutions that help organizations to achieve secure health information exchange, cost-efficient data management, regulatory compliance and caregiver mobility. Sun healthcare solutions help reduce costs and medical errors while improving organizational efficiency and patient-centric care.