The Business Challenge
If there is a power failure at a hospital, lives are at stake. They rarely lose power because they have backup units and special arrangements with the power company, but nonetheless, there still needs to be a contingency plan in place.
There are also planned downtime events, where a system needs to be taken down to perform maintenance. Virginia Hospital needed a plan to cover both of these types of events.
Solution Considerations
Patient data needed to be up-to-date (within the past hour) and available at the nursing stations in the event of a power failure
The contingency plan would need to be fully functional without the use of primary power
Only a UPS (alternate power source) would be available
Solution Implemented
Data was pulled each hour from the live system
PDF Documents were available with patient data that could be printed and distributed to nursing stations
Patient data, such as administered medications, were immediately available
Solution's Impact on the Business
Hospital could meet regulatory requirements to have a downtime contingency plan
Hospital could function in the event of a scheduled downtime
Solution was relatively low in cost compared with other solutions