Hong Kong's Quality Healthcare Medical Services turns to cloud computing

By eGov Innovation Editors | Dec 27, 2011

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IBM is building a virtualized infrastructure for Quality HealthCare Medical Services. The project involves the consolidation of more than 100 servers into a cloud environment that hosts its mission critical systems that serve over 600 medical centers in Hong Kong and Macau.

By reducing the number of physical servers from over 100 to eight IBM System x3650 servers and centralizing storage, QHMS can reduce IT operational costs by 25 percent and software license and related maintenance costs by 23 percent. The new and highly redundant server infrastructure also includes an automated centralized back-up system of IBM System Storage DS3500 Express that enables fast, secure and cost-effective storage management, back up and recovery.

“We are always looking for ways to further improve the patient experience. Our new cloud allows us to deliver information to our doctors faster and in a more reliable way,” said Elaine Chu, Chief Operating Officer of QHMS. “As a result, we will be able to serve our patients more effectively and with higher levels of care. It is very exciting to see how we can make a difference to our patients with the help of technology.” 

QHMS provides care for private and corporate contract patients through a network of more than 580 Western and Chinese medical centers, and 47 dental and physiotherapy centers. It also operates Hong Kong’s longest-established nursing agency.

QHMS aims to monitor business performance in over 600 medical centers. With IBM Cognos BI, QHMS can build a standardized and centralized information delivery platform that is scalable and flexible, and that enables QHMS to monitor the performance of a wide range of services running on different systems. 

“We are pleased to help Quality HealthCare build a smarter computing infrastructure to support its growth strategy,” said Savio Ng, Executive, Systems and Technology Group at IBM China/Hong Kong Limited. “By providing a scalable server and storage infrastructure, we believe we can help Quality Healthcare drive greater efficiencies and address its business growth in a dynamic market.”

The server consolidation project was delivered through Microware, which provided system analysis and infrastructure design consultation services, including consolidation assessment, network, storage and backup design for the project. The system migration is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.