Chris O’Brien Lifehouse becomes the first hospital in the world to implement BridgeHead’s RAPid™ data protection solution running on the AWS public cloud

ASHTEAD, UK – June 14, 2021 – Bridgehead software, a leader in healthcare data management, today announced the successful implementation of its RAPid™ data protection solution at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse Cancer Hospital in Sydney, Australia. As a world first, BridgeHead’s RAPid Data Protection product has been deployed within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud to provide a backup and recovery solution for Chris O’s new MEDITECH Expanse Electronic Health Record (EHR) Brien Lifehouse, also believed to be the first of its kind to run on the AWS Cloud.

Chris O’Brien Lifehouse – Culture of innovation and « Cloud First » strategy.
Chris O’Brien Lifehouse is a non-profit comprehensive cancer hospital in Camperdown, Sydney. The hospital, which serves the wider population of New South Wales, has fostered a culture of innovation since its inception in 2013, in an effort to deliver patient-centred, multidisciplinary and holistic cancer care for both public and private patients.

The project with BridgeHead grew out of Chris O’Brien’s Lifehouse digital transformation program, where he adopted a « Cloud First » policy. The hospital has increasingly moved its technology to the cloud to enjoy the flexibility and scalability that the cloud offers, such as the speed and ease with which it can upgrade or downgrade all types of technical services on demand. Chris O’Brien Lifehouse also strongly believes that its real estate is best used for its patients instead of taking up valuable space in computer rooms full of hardware, which then needs to be maintained and supported.

As part of his vision and drive for innovation, Chris O’Brien Lifehouse selected MEDITECH Expanse as his EHR solution, but with one significant provision: that it be fully enabled to run on the AWS Public Cloud (believed to be the first of its kind everywhere in the world). Additionally, another key focus for Chris O’Brien Lifehouse was the ability to not only perform full backup and restore of the MEDITECH Expanse application on AWS, but also that the data protection solution should do so efficiently and effectively while also running in the AWS cloud, which was also believed to be a world first.

As Peter Singer, Director of Information Technology at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse explains, “We had a very clear vision of what we wanted. Our digital transformation journey to the public cloud isn’t a « nice to have, » it’s a must. The real question was: Could BridgeHead rise to the challenge we presented?

BridgeHead relies on MEDITECH protection in the AWS public cloud
BridgeHead’s RAPid Data Protection product continues to maintain its position as the market-leading backup and recovery solution for MEDITECH environments, backed by a team of industry experts with extensive knowledge and experience stemming from the company’s long-standing relationship with MEDITECH, which has now lasted for over 20 years. However, while BridgeHead has an established pedigree, this alone would not be sufficient to meet the project requirements. What was needed was a commitment to build and deploy a data protection solution that could work in unison with Chris O’Brien’s Lifehouse instance of MEDITECH Expanse, both hosted and highly available and running in the AWS public cloud.

Comprehensive Cancer Hospital initially engaged with BridgeHead 2 years ago at the MEDITECH Physicians and CIO Forum in Boston, USA. After many interviews, BridgeHead was ultimately selected by the hospital as their preferred vendor due to their willingness to collaborate and scale the RAPid Data Protection solution to work efficiently in the AWS Cloud.

As Gareth Griffiths, Executive Director and RAPid Product Manager explained, “We have a history of being at the forefront when it comes to safeguarding MEDITECH systems. We have always been the first vendor to offer support for new MEDITECH certified SAN arrays. Clearly, we appreciate a challenge; and the project with Chris O’Brien Lifehouse was sure to be one! The key to success wasn’t just providing a backup and recovery solution that could run on AWS…that’s a fact. The real mission was to do this without degradation of system performance and while remaining affordable. It was not a trivial task, not only because of the technical complexity, but because it had never been done before. Together with Chris O’Brien’s Lifehouse team, we needed to pioneer a new solution that could achieve their vision. »

Throughout the duration of the project, the BridgeHead team was able to iterate and scale their RAPid solution to perform consistent backups, in a timely manner, across the MEDITECH server property hosted in the AWS Cloud. To do this, BridgeHead needed to leverage available cloud technology, use the proper deduplication methods, and all within a clustered environment to eliminate the need for downtime or system restarts.

As the number of backups increased, the team quickly realized that Cloud Storage costs were also increasing, which is why a deduplication solution was recommended. Chris O’Brien’s Lifehouse team identified Quest’s QoreStor as their preferred solution, an organization with which BridgeHead already had a long relationship. Working together, the teams soon demonstrated how a cloud deduplication appliance significantly reduces cloud storage costs for backups while maintaining fast recovery capability.

Mr. Singer comments: “We all worked very well together as a project team. Once our MEDITECH Expanse solution went live in November 2020, we needed to evaluate if BridgeHead’s RAPid™ was running optimally in the AWS Cloud to ensure we were efficiently backing up our EHR data. We have since undertaken extensive testing to verify this is the case. Most importantly, we recently did a full MEDITECH reset using RAPid and it passed with flying colors. It is always hoped that you are never in the position of having to restore a critical healthcare system. But, at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, we are now safe in the knowledge that, if needed, we can quickly restore our MEDITECH Expanse system thanks to BridgeHead. Having that peace of mind more than pays off the investment. I would like to thank everyone at BridgeHead, MEDITECH and Chris O’Brien Lifehouse who have contributed to this important project. »

BridgeHead’s RAPid: a project to protect MEDITECH in the cloud
With their commitment to this project and BridgeHead’s subsequent investment in the development of RAPid, the company has clearly identified and understood the growing trend of hospitals moving to the cloud. In doing so, BridgeHead has not only developed a new solution that can protect cloud-hosted MEDITECH Expanse systems running on AWS, but now plans to use the techniques learned to do the same for other public cloud environments, such as Google Cloud Platforms, Microsoft Azure and Private Clouds.

Mr. Singer adds, “At Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, we march to the beat of our own drum. Innovation is really important to us and a key ingredient to our success and is also essential in our technology partnerships. I believe we are the first hospital to go live with MEDITECH Expanse in an AWS environment worldwide. We are also the first healthcare organization to deploy BridgeHead’s RAPid™ for MEDITECH on AWS. Thus, this project has produced many « firsts ». Not only is RAPid now working very well for Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, but I believe it will be really beneficial for other customers who need to secure MEDITECH Expanse in a Cloud environment. »

Jim Beagle, President and CEO, BridgeHead Software, “This project has truly been a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. Chris O’Brien Lifehouse had a vision of what he wanted to achieve by deploying MEDITECH Expanse on the AWS Cloud; and we’re glad they chose BridgeHead’s RAPid™ Data Protection as part of that solution. As this was new territory for both organisations, we worked closely together to ensure the solution fully fulfills that vision. I’m very, very proud of our collective achievements in this project. »

[ENDS]

About Chris O’Brien Lifehouse Cancer Hospital
Chris O’Brien Lifehouse is a non-profit comprehensive cancer hospital in Camperdown, Sydney. From screening to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and wellness, we treat all types of cancer, specializing in complex and rare ones. We offer patients all the services and therapies they need, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, complementary therapies and supportive services, all under one roof.

Our mission is to improve the quality of life for cancer patients, carers and their families by promoting the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure and prevention of the disease.

For more information visit https://www.mylifehouse.org.au/

Information about BridgeHead software
BridgeHead Software is the leader in data and storage management dedicated entirely to the healthcare industry and is trusted by more than 1,200 hospitals worldwide. Today, BridgeHead Software is helping healthcare organizations overcome the challenges of growing data volumes and rising storage costs while providing peace of mind how to consolidate, archive, protect and share patient, clinic, corporate and and financial.

BridgeHead healthcare data management solutions are designed to work with the applications and storage hardware of any hospital’s choice, regardless of vendor, giving you more choice, flexibility and control over how your data is managed now and in the future. For more information visit https://www.bridgeheadsoftware.com or follow on Twitter at @BridgeHeadHDM.

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