Prince Albert Cooperative Health Centre

Partnering with ISM Canada for NetworkStation Management solutions brings Prince Albert Health District more desktop computing power, efficiency and security improvements.

The Prince Albert Cooperative Health Centre is one of five cooperative health centres in Saskatchewan, and the second largest in the province. Its 12 medical staff and 75 employees provide a wide range of medical and social services to approximately 8,000 clients. The PA Cooperative Health Centre is a unique health care model in the province, offering community health care, women's and family programs, visiting nurses, day surgery, nutrition counseling, x-ray, laboratory, and physiotherapy services.

In 2003, the PA Cooperative Health Centre was at a crossroads. The problem? Saskatchewan Health was asking for access to their client base and data. The previous system, installed in 1998, held outdated software capabilities. In addition, frequent hard drive crashes led to reduced user productivity. It could no longer produce what the Health Centre required, creating a system that was difficult to manage and maintain.

"SaskHealth needing our data was our primary driver," says Sherry Janzen, Director of Administrative Services, Prince Albert Cooperative Health Centre. "We needed a way to collect the data but our computers were not adequate for the task."

"We are a very simple organization, but had a complex computer system," she adds. "We needed to simplify our IT system so it could be more manageable for us."

SaskHealth provided the PA Cooperative Health Centre with partial funding to install a brand new system that would meet their needs. As services provider to the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region, ISM Canada was contracted to begin the evaluation and planning stage in July 2003. Implementation began in September, following the installation of the C-NET to enable data sharing with the Saskatchewan Health Information Network (SHIN).

The new system, consisting of 43 new desktops and 13 printers, delivers considerable improvement over the original 34 PCs and five printers. Currently, they are in the midst of performing a server consolidation and upgrade, followed by a complete overhaul of their network. They now realize a standard desktop set of applications, a locked-down desktop for better security, and a more centralized means of remote desktop management.

The rollout was performed with the value added elements of the IBM ThinkVantage tool set. ISM Canada used the RDM (Remote Deployment Manager), SMA (System Migration Assist), and SDA (Software Delivery Assist) packages that come free with the IBM workstations. They also utilize the IBM Director tool set to gather asset information and perform workstation takeover during the project and is now ready to serve future needs.

Sherry calls the whole experience a positive one. "ISM Canada's major strengths are their people and their patience. The technicians have demonstrated great patience in porting our system. Their commitment to our project is outstanding. They've gone over and above what we expected. The project manager has been very responsive and maintained constant communication.

"The whole process has been all about efficiency," she concludes. "ISM Canada knew exactly what we needed, and that's exactly what we got."