Dell-HIMSS Analytics Survey: Small and Medium Hospitals in North America, Western Europe and China Ill-Prepared for Data Explosion

    --  Datacenters Are at Risk for Burgeoning Technologies Like Electronic
        Medical Records
    --  Dell Provides Pragmatic Action Plan to Improve Efficiency and Ready Data
        Centers for the Future

ROUND ROCK, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- As government and healthcare leaders invest billions of dollars in healthcare information technologies (IT) to improve the accessibility, affordability and quality of healthcare for their citizens, hospital datacenters may not be ready for the demand that more patients and digital information will create, according to a survey of hospital IT executives at small and medium hospitals in the U.S., U.K., Canada, China, France and Germany conducted by the HIMSS Analytics, sponsored by Dell.

The HIMSS Analytics survey asked hospital IT executives to assess the readiness of their hospital datacenters to support new information demands as reform initiatives such as electronic medical records (EMRs) and digital imaging become more pervasive. Results suggest that there will be challenges associated with scaling small and medium hospital datacenters to meet these demands and to supporting efficiently technology at the point-of-care -- the No. 1 strategic priority of hospital senior IT executives in nearly every country.

The News:

The Healthcare Enterprise Survey revealed that hospital IT executives at small and medium-sized hospitals believe that EMRs, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), capacity for storing digital images, needs of affiliated physicians and business intelligence will increase demand on their datacenters by an average of 20 to 50 percent over the next two years.

While many small and medium hospitals anticipate they will spend more on IT next year, they also describe datacenter challenges that Dell believes will make it difficult for them to efficiently manage new information demands. These challenges include a lack of standards, security, extended server refresh cycles and complexity created by a large number of servers and vendors and limited use of virtualization.

Lack of datacenter standards complicate the information sharing within and between hospitals necessary for diagnosis, decision making and coordination and management of patient care. With refresh cycles of five years or more, small and medium hospitals rely on servers that are less efficient and cost more to run and manage as they prepare for a significant increase in data over the next two years.

Without aggressive adoption of virtualization, hospitals that simply add servers and storage to their datacenters to meet growing data demand will end up perpetuating the complexity that already consumes a majority of their IT resources, leaving less of their budgets for strategic priorities even as they invest more in IT.

Now is the time for small and medium hospitals to prepare their datacenters to handle strategic reform and healthcare priorities and for government leaders to consider the significant contribution these hospitals can make to an information infrastructure that streamlines administration, improves diagnosis and decision-making at the point of care and coordination and quality of patient care across the healthcare system.

In addition, the survey pointed to individual country concerns, as follows:

In the U.S.:

    --  Regulation Driving Requirements. U.S. hospital IT execs most frequently
        identified regulatory issues as the business issue that will have the
        most significant impact on healthcare over the next 2 years. Dell
        believes this could translate into regulation and compliance
        requirements for information management and security.
    --  Server Proliferation. With an average of 75 servers, U.S. and U.K. small
        and medium hospitals run the greatest number of servers among
        similarly-sized hospitals in other countries. And because one-third have
        not virtualized to any extent, Dell believes many small and medium
        hospitals are under utilizing servers and over extending IT resources
        for server management.
    --  Application Complexity. By and large, hospitals report that hardware
        choices are driven by software companies and that application support is
        the greatest inhibitor to virtualization. Dell believes this indicates
        that datacenter infrastructures have not been designed for the best
        performance or efficiency.

In Canada:

    --  Staffing Challenges. Canada's hospital IT executives identified staffing
        challenges along with regulatory and consumer issues as having the
        biggest impact on the healthcare system in Canada over the next two
        years suggesting that IT initiatives that improve staff productivity
        could be of strategic value.
    --  EMR and HIE Demands. IT executives see EMR and health information
        exchanges as creating the greatest demand for their datacenters in the
        future.
    --  Server Proliferation. Hospitals in Canada are running an average of 55
        servers, which is among the highest in the sample. However, they also
        report a higher level of virtualization -- with 67 percent of hospitals
        reporting some level of virtualization -- second only to the U.S.
    --  Data Security Challenges. Concerns about data security are the greatest
        IT productivity and scaling challenge for small and medium hospital
        datacenters in Canada. Dell believes that new virtualization tools for
        servers and storage that incorporate data back up and disaster recovery
        could help address this issue.

In China:

    --  Lack of Standards and scaling and management of servers are top scaling
        challenges for enabling senior IT executives in China to meet their
        scaling needs.
    --  Lack of Capacity. With an average of four servers, hospitals in China
        have a fraction of the servers of similarly-sized hospitals in the five
        other surveyed countries. For example, U.S. hospitals average 75 servers
        and U.K. hospitals average 81 servers.
    --  Aging Servers. Three-quarters of China's senior IT executives report
        that they refresh their servers a minimum of every five years.
    --  Non-Existent Virtualization. 96 percent reported no virtualization today
        and only 16 percent plan to virtualize their servers within two years.
        This is the lowest level of virtualization among similarly-sized
        hospitals in surveyed countries.
    --  A High Degree of Concern. China's senior IT executives are the most
        concerned of all surveyed IT leaders about the ability of their data
        centers to support growing data demands.
    --  Encouraging factors for the outlook of small and medium hospital
        datacenters around the world include:
        o Growth of IT Budgets. Three-quarters of hospital IT executives
          indicated that their IT budgets would likely increase next year; only
          8 percent indicated that their budgets would decrease.

A Pragmatic Action Plan:

    --  Based on these findings and its experience with large hospitals, Dell
        recommends a pragmatic six-point action plan to help small and medium
        hospitals improve the efficiency and scalability of their data centers
        to support healthcare reform and business priorities and make the most
        of their current and future IT investments:
        o Eliminate Complexity. Adopt standards-based technology and an open and
          flexible architecture across the datacenter in order to automate
          routine management tasks, simplify virtualization to achieve optimal
          server and storage utilization and lay the foundation for
          interoperability and information exchange within the hospital and
          across the healthcare system. Standardization now will reduce
          maintenance costs, which consume a significant portion of IT budgets,
          and simplify scaling in the future.
        o Invest, but Invest Wisely in more efficient and scalable systems and
          management tools that reduce maintenance costs and have scaling
          capacity. For example, Dell's PowerEdge(TM) Servers, powered by the
          Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 5500 Series processors, have significantly
          greater processing capacity than previous generations. They are
          easier-to-manage, virtualization-ready and can provide a significant
          increase in performance over previous generation servers allowing
          hospitals to run more compute intensive databases and applications
          more efficiently. Regular server refresh can save money by reducing
          management overhead and reducing power consumption and cost.
        o Virtualize Now to Prevent Server and Storage Proliferation. Accelerate
          server and storage virtualization to scale efficiently, minimize
          maintenance costs and free up budget and IT resources for strategic
          HIT priorities. Use system management tools to simplify management of
          virtual environments.
        o Consider Alternative Models. Look at SaaS models for applications with
          likelihood for substantial growth or with large bandwidth requirements
          -- such as electronic medical records systems. Also consider hosted
          application and datacenter usage models for additional capacity when
          and as hospitals need it.
        o Automate Routine Management Tasks to free up IT resources for
          strategic priorities. For example, Dell factory-installs server images
          to eliminate time-consuming manual configuration and reduce deployment
          and IT staff time. Also use servers with embedded management tools
          such as integrated controllers that monitor and manage performance
          from a single console.
        o Tier Data Effectively to reduce hardware costs, secure data and meet
          data availability requirements.
    --  For a copy of survey highlights and more information on how small and
        medium hospitals can improve the efficiency of their datacenters click
        here.

Quotes:

"Small and medium hospitals are a sizeable component of the healthcare delivery system in most countries," said Jamie Coffin, Ph.D., vice president of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences. "We must ensure that all hospitals -- large and small, new and existing -- are equipped with the right IT infrastructure to support information demands today and in the future. We cannot simply throw servers and storage at information demand or complexity will over-run IT budgets and leave little support for the strategic HIT priorities which support healthcare reform and business initiatives."

About Dell:

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers the innovative technology and services they trust and value. Dell serves those who serve with next generation infrastructure for healthcare.

Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

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    Source: Dell Inc.

Released January 27, 2010