Australian public health provider NSW Health has rolled-out a range of Citrix technologies to help doctors better diagnose and treat patients with cancer.
Within NSW Health’s regional network of hospitals, the Illawarra Shoalhaven Cancer and Haematology Network (ISCaHN), they can now use Citrix solutions to equip all employees – doctors, nurses and emergency departments – with remote and secure access to sensitive patient information, analysis of hi-res medical images across devices, and aiding the success of its BYOD initiative.
“Through NSW Health’s Citrix XenApp platforms we have innovated and changed the way we treat cancer. By providing medical staff with greater flexibility through optimised and high-quality data access, we improved our services to patients – empowering them to deliver round-the-clock healthcare from a variety of locations without compromising security of confidential medical details,” said Kenneth Masters, ISCaHN’s Oncology Information System Manager.
Having introduced a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiative in 2015, NSW Health required a solution that extended beyond basic flexible work arrangements, allowing staff to securely share, access and analyze MRI and X-ray images from anywhere on any device.
Using Citrix XenApp, NSW Health is able to publish text-based and visual applications, such as X-ray medical imaging, securely across encrypted links to any device, while Citrix NetScaler is used to manage and optimize applications used across the network in real time.
This ensures no patient data is left on staff devices at the end of the session, which is critical in the context of protecting sensitive personal medical histories, and all application performance and security issues can be rapidly addressed to ensure the seamless delivery of patient services.
“Business continuity is critical, particularly in healthcare, and Citrix technology is vital to delivering uninterrupted services across NSW Health. For example, in 2016 we implemented a Workspace-as-a-Service program with Citrix, providing nursing staff with single log-ins to securely and immediately access all our apps and data from up to 600 terminal PC,” said Masters.