Isala creates an enhanced digital environment for clinicians

To support high-quality, digitally enabled healthcare, Isala sought a more agile and scalable IT environment. The prominent Dutch regional hospital’s legacy platform had become increasingly resource-intensive and was limiting innovation. By transitioning to Omnissa Horizon® and Omnissa Workspace ONE®, Isala reported it was able to streamline app delivery and improve clinician access to digital tools—without disrupting day-to-day operations.

Mobile devices at the heart of innovative healthcare

Isala is a large healthcare provider that believes in progress. As one of the leading clinical training hospitals in the Netherlands, it promotes high-quality patient care, cutting-edge treatment options, and the application of scientific research and innovation in healthcare. Like most medical providers in the Netherlands, Isala has dramatically increased the use of mobile devices throughout its organization over the past 15 years.

Legacy platform holds back momentum

The IT team at Isala relied on a Citrix-based environment to deliver virtual desktops and apps to staff. However, the limitations of the Citrix system became more apparent as the hospital’s use of mobile devices grew. 

“The biggest issue we had was that the Citrix VDI environment was too static,” says Jos Minnema, enterprise architect at Isala. “It took too long for us to make changes, and it couldn’t evolve with us or adapt to the modern software we wanted to deploy. It was simply taking too much effort to maintain and develop. We could no longer justify the costs of the license.”

Minnema also had concerns that the IT team was overly reliant on Isala’s managed service partner and was looking for ways to bring more control back in-house.

A two-stage transition to modern VDI and laptop management

After evaluating its current set-up and available alternatives, Minnema and his team opted to replace the Citrix environment with Omnissa Horizon, which includes Horizon App Volumes for real-time app delivery and lifecycle management. In addition, Isala opted to implement Omnissa Workspace ONE UEM to manage its estate of laptops, to enable greater in-house control and management, and to ensure secure access control.

“When we looked around the market, we were impressed by the extent of the development behind the Omnissa solutions,” says Minnema. “We want to consolidate providers where possible and practical, so the package of Horizon and Workspace ONE was very appealing to us.”

The team split the implementation into two distinct stages. The first stage was to take out the Citrix components and transition them to Horizon. “The transition to Omnissa Horizon was very smooth with minimal impact on our users,” says Minnema.

The second, ongoing, phase is to move to Microsoft Windows 11 from Microsoft Windows 10, and to implement the complete Microsoft 365 environment. The transition involves moving around 8,000 users across different license types, enabling them to work primarily with the web-based versions of the Microsoft productivity and collaboration tools.

A considered approach with technical account managers on hand

To ensure that the impact of the overall transition was as low as possible, Isala adopted a phased approach. The migration is taking place department by department and app by app. The initial focus is on medical apps that are most widely used and the departments that use them. More departments and additional apps are being added in later stages.

Isala has also put in place a dedicated team within each department to support staff through the transition and was able to call on its technical account manager from Omnissa to assist during the whole process. “A technical account manager who is really close to the work, who can follow up on challenges, and really understands what you’re trying to do makes a real difference,” says Minnema. “It was an important success factor for us.”

Easy onboarding, faster app delivery, and greater control

As implementation continues, Isala and its IT team are beginning to see the advantages of having a modern, scalable workspace that supports its on-site staff as well as its remote workers.

Workspace ONE has already made a difference in terms of managing the onboarding of new members of staff and securing devices, as well as adding new patch compliance capabilities. “We always work with clinical teams to make sure our technology plans match their needs. They then expect it to just work, so the best feedback we can have is no feedback at all. That’s how we know everything is working as it should,” says Minnema. “The good news is that our clinicians have been very quiet since we started the Workspace ONE journey.”

Minnema’s IT teams are also pleased with the Omnissa platform and the control that they have regained. Patient electronic health records (EHRs) are easily accessible through Horizon, while App Volumes has made it far easier to centrally package and then manage the multitude of apps in use at Isla’s hospitals.

“Apps are easy to package with App Volumes,” says Minnema. “It takes less time, and the success rate is very high, and most apps are correct from the very start. This is where I get positive feedback. My engineers and IT teams are really happy with it.”

In addition, Apps on Demand means that users only download apps when they need them, which enhances performance without additional management burden.

The Horizon deployment also creates opportunities for long-term planning with predictable performance and licensing. “I’m an enterprise architect and am always thinking several years ahead,” says Minnema. “We have so many plans for the development of the IT service to the hospital, and I’m confident that with Horizon and Workspace ONE in place, we can deliver on those plans—and keep life interesting for our IT teams.”

Key learnings

• Implementing big changes in steps is key to success, as it has been for Isala. Breaking down projects into smaller steps can keep everything moving forward smoothly, and in a more controlled fashion.
• Having a long-term vision of what the end-state will look like can help overcome short-term hurdles. However, dogmatism can be dangerous. The key is to be flexible while keeping an eye on the horizon.
• The timing of user training on new systems, and the care taken to encourage user adoption were important success factors for Isala. It should be well enough in advance that users can input into the final design, but not too far for it to become too abstract or meaningless.
• Having on-the-ground technical support from your vendor is as important as the functionality of the solutions being implemented. They can provide additional support to users coming to terms with new ways of working.