Integrated Healthcare Provider Transforms Clinical Efficiency and Care Delivery

A leading healthcare system in the northeastern United States, a recognized digital innovator, has revolutionized its healthcare delivery by partnering with Omnissa and deploying virtual desktops with Horizon Cloud on Google. By placing clinicians at the center of its strategy, adopting a phased virtual desktop deployment and focusing on the user experience, the provider has empowered clinicians, streamlined IT and enhanced security. The result is better care for thousands of patients.

Transforming healthcare through digital innovation

This leading healthcare provider, recognized as one of America’s Most Innovative Companies in 2023, serves more than 27,000 patients daily across 185 cities and towns. With a 45,000-strong workforce, the healthcare system constantly strives to improve its digital infrastructure and processes to support evolving care delivery models and empower its large team of clinicians.

Challenges with traditional desktop infrastructure

Despite its reputation for digital excellence, like other healthcare providers, this healthcare system faced several challenges with its legacy desktop infrastructure. Clinicians were reliant on physical desktop computers, which made it difficult for them to transition between workspaces, such as the hospital and home, which negatively impacted their productivity and quality of patient care.

Managing thousands of desktops was also time-consuming and costly for the IT team. It required frequent hardware refreshes, complex image management and ongoing software patching. Any IT changes needed to be carefully planned to minimize disruptions to critical workflows and ensure zero compromise on patient care. To address these challenges, the healthcare provider wanted to implement a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution.

Phased roll-out focused on ease-of-use for staff

This large healthcare system engaged with Omnissa and explored the adoption of Horizon Cloud on Google for their VDI requirements. The organization first needed to convince key stakeholders of the cost-effectiveness of transitioning to a cloud-based VDI environment. This was achieved by demonstrating both tangible savings, such as reduced hardware acquisition costs, and soft cost savings, such as automated software upgrades provided by Google.

With the initiative given the go-ahead, the healthcare system established an operating committee of technology leaders, clinical informatics professionals, and frontline healthcare workers. This approach placed end-users—such as doctors and nurses— directly in the decision-making process, with pilot schemes to ensure the new solution aligned with their day-to-day needs and matched existing workflows.

When deploying the virtual desktops more broadly, the healthcare system took a phased approach. This enabled technical challenges to be addressed before full-scale adoption, thereby minimizing downtime. The organization also focused on familiarity and ease-of-use for staff. This included preserving the existing look and feel of workflows, personalizing workspaces through role-based app assignments and minimizing feature clutter through apps-on-demand, a feature of Omnissa App Volumes.

“The key to successful adoption was ensuring that workflows remained familiar,” says a lead engineer from the healthcare system. “We aligned the Horizon Cloud on Google technology so closely with the current practices that clinicians hardly noticed any changes—and that’s the best feedback you can get.”

Enhanced clinician experiences and streamlined workflows

With the migration process successfully completed, the sizeable healthcare provider has seen benefits across its organization. “Using Omnissa Horizon has worked really well for us. From operational savings to improving clinician workflows, it’s been a game-changer for modernizing our desktop solutions,” says the lead engineer.

Clinician productivity has significantly increased. The “follow-me” feature enables them to transition effortlessly between devices and locations while maintaining secure access to patient data. The integration of technologies like Dragon speech-recognition software allows easy dictation for patient notes, emails and Word documents, which further streamlines workflows and enhances efficiency.

“With virtual desktops, our clinicians can roam seamlessly between locations, pick up where they left off, and save time with features like integrated dictation tools. Horizon Cloud on Google has improved their day-to-day experience significantly,” says the engineer.

The healthcare organization also embedded workflows like Epic Hyperdrive, a cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) system, directly into the virtual desktop environment. This ensures users don’t have double hops (where they need to make two consecutive network connections to reach Epic) or latency issues, speeding up access to critical healthcare tools and systems.

The move to Horizon Cloud has also resulted in additional financial, operational and security benefits. Virtual desktops have reduced the need for endpoint refresh cycles, freeing up IT resources and lowering costs. At the same time, the transition from on-premises infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform allows the healthcare provider to take advantage of the inherent scalability and cost-effectiveness of a hyperscaler environment. Additionally, the organization’s use of lightweight IGEL OS—which integrates seamlessly with Horizon Cloud—not only boosts endpoint security but also strengthens cost management.

“Moving to the cloud isn’t just about cost savings. It’s about being future-ready and giving our clinicians cutting-edge tools that enhance care delivery,” says the engineer.

When reflecting on the well-strategized, phased rollout and the impact of the cloud-based VDI, the lead engineer continues: “Our success comes from fearless innovation, backed by strong leadership and dedicated teams. We’ve proven to ourselves and others that you can lead in new technology without losing reliability.”

Future innovation in healthcare workflows

With a roadmap to achieve multi-cloud capabilities within the next year, this innovative healthcare system is exploring the use of Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure as a business continuity and disaster recovery solution as well as transitioning Epic EHR systems to the cloud. The organization is also planning to expand its use of Omnissa App Volumes, enabling role-based, on-demand app experiences that maximize efficiency while reducing bloat in desktops.

“We’re excited about where Omnissa is heading—expanding App Volumes, integrating other hypervisors and simplifying application management. These advancements fit perfectly with the vision we have for our organization,” says the lead engineer.

With a shared vision of continuous innovation in both organizations, this healthcare system recognizes the importance of a technology partner that can adapt and evolve alongside it.

“Omnissa’s innovation and flexibility make it a great partner as we continue to modernize our healthcare workflows. Its forward-thinking approach ensures that we’re always ready for what’s next,” says the healthcare system’s engineer.