Canton, Ohio Healthcare Institution Leverages Technology to Facilitate Communication Among Patients, Families, Staff
Infinidat, the leading provider of multi-petabyte data storage solutions, credited customer Aultman Hospital of Canton, Ohio, for its use of technology to keep patients, families and staff safe and connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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For healthcare organizations, ensuring secure connectivity has been critical to the process of maintaining ongoing operations and keeping patients connected with their families. Under the direction of Chief Technology Officer Rafael Gonzalez, the IT team at Stark County’s largest hospital connected more than 1,000 remote, non-clinical workers by setting up 300 virtual desktops. They added additional storage to enable the desktops along with VPN connections for laptop users.
Aultman Hospital also repurposed a series of mobile workstations to enable each unit within the hospital to provide video conferencing between patients and their families, which was tremendously popular with patients and staff. Through this virtual visitation program, patients connected with family members from across the country. One patient, who could not speak because of an intubation, used a whiteboard the staff provided to communicate with family members in Florida and Colorado.
“Getting the back-end processes ready to support that many users, in a matter of weeks, was quite stressful, but our team worked around the clock to make it happen,” said Rafael Gonzalez, CTO, Aultman Hospital. “Several of our key technology partners also have stepped up to the plate, and for that we are eternally grateful.”
Dealing with the financial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis represents an ongoing challenge. The Aultman executive and management teams, excluding clinical staff, took pay cuts and technology partners offered customized support. This support includes free additional data storage from Infinidat, extending total capacity to over one petabyte, free extended trial licenses from VMware, and increased bandwidth from Spectrum to support remote users.
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