Korean hospital system builds country's first integrated hospital infrastructure

IBM announced that the Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital will use the company’s hardware and software solution to build South Korea’s first integrated hospital infrastructure.

The solution is designed to enable the hospital to gain insight from increasing volumes of patient data and easily provide it to doctors, nurses, laboratories and payers, officials say. The hospital expects to improve patient care by determining and administering the most appropriate treatments quickly and efficiently.

Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital operates 2,890 beds in four locations, including Seoul, Bucheon, ChunAn and Kumi.

Two years ago, the hospital launched an EMR project aimed at enhancing the use of patient data and reducing fragmentation of medical information.

IBM Korea was chosen to implement the project, which created a workload-optimized system that supports doctors in the hospital’s four locations, enabling them to work collaboratively to improve patient care and accountability.

“We wanted to provide a powerful platform that made it easier to develop and integrate tools supporting physicians’ decision-making processes,” said Yoon Soo Keun, managing director at Donegun Information Technology (IT subsidiary of Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital).

IBM is delivering a full range of technologies for processing, storage and virtualization. Officials say the new infrastructure will be capable of handling more than 100 TB of data – the approximate equivalent of more than 650 billion photos on Facebook. The hospital will use the new infrastructure to host an integrated medical information system that establishes a single EMR system with a single database.

The technology will also enable a platform that can facilitate data-sharing between the hospital’s locations.

“Going forward with Korea’s first integrated hospital infrastructure system, Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital will pave the way towards smarter healthcare, elevating patient convenience and satisfaction, while delivering better economics,” said Lee Jang Suk, director of IBM Korea.