Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital to Improve Healthcare with IBM Smarter Computing

Korean medical center to use a new platform integrating 100 TB of healthcare data to gain insight, measure performance, and improve patient care

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Mar 29, 2012, 08:00 ET

SEOUL, South Korea, March 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital has embraced the company's smarter computing approach to IT to build the country's first integrated hospital infrastructure.

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The hardware and software solution, which was selected over bids by HP and Hitachi, is designed to enable the growing medical center to cull insight from swelling volumes of patient data and provide it easily to doctors, nurses, clinical laboratories and insurance institutions. As a result, the hospital expects to dramatically improve patient care by being able to determine and dispense the most appropriate treatments more clearly and quickly than in the past.

Since Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital was founded in 1972 it has grown into a major healthcare institution that operates 2,890 beds in four different locations: Seoul, Bucheon, ChunAn, and Kumi. Two years ago it launched an electronic medical records project that was aimed at enhancing the use of patient data and reducing fragmentation of medical information.

IBM Korea was chosen for this project to create a workload optimized system that was able to support doctors and other health providers in all four locations, and enable them all to work together 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 Dongeun Information Technology - IT subsidiary of Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital. "The new IBM system will be more efficient and capable to quickly access data stored in many different formats and multiple locations."

Under the agreement signed in December 2011, IBM is delivering a full range of technologies from processing and storage to virtualization. Among the many systems to be implemented will be IBM Power 780 and 740 systems equipped with PowerVM virtualization; IBM System x3650 M3 systems; IBM System Storage DS8000 high capacity storage, IBM Storwize V7000 Unified Storage Systems, and much more. All told, 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 leverage the new infrastructure to host a next-generation integrated medical information system called "SU-III Project" which establishes a single electronic medical records system with a single database.

In addition to the new infrastructure, IBM's PowerVM virtualization technology will enable a more dynamic and flexible platform that can facilitate data sharing between the hospital branches more swiftly, while optimizing system utilization and keeping costs under control. After the project is completed the hospital's IT infrastructure will be managed out of one main medical information center in Bucheon.

"Applying advanced technologies in academic hospitals such as Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital holds the potential to turn them into regional healthcare hotspots," said Lee, Jang Suk, Director, IBM Korea. "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."

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Contact(s) information:

Mike Zimmerman
IBM Media Relations
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Myunghee Son
IBM Media Relations, IBM Korea
+82-2-3781-4681
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SOURCE IBM