Giving roaming clinicians instant, secure access to patient data

Innovating for patients and providers

Enterprise Solutions

University of Michigan Health-West, formerly Metro Health, has been changing healthcare in West Michigan since its founding in 1942 in Grand Rapids. Nearly five years ago, the organization joined one of the most respected, highly ranked health systems in the world, adding new services, new choices, and new access to nationally ranked excellence for the patients and communities it serves.

University of Michigan Health-West needed clinicians to access patient records securely from wherever care was happening, not just from a fixed desktop, so Vervint partnered with the health system for nearly two decades on a series of firsts, from the region’s first electronic medical record system to a secure virtual desktop infrastructure that lets roaming clinicians log in from any workstation in seconds.

Primary goals for University of Michigan Health-West

Get clinicians logged in fast, wherever they are

Let physicians, nurses, and staff access their own desktop from any workstation in 10 seconds or less.

Keep patient data secure and centralized

Run all computing from the data center so security, credentials, and personalization stayed centrally managed rather than shared informally between staff.

Solve performance without sacrificing scale

Fix graphics processing slowdowns without abandoning the virtual desktop approach, even for image-heavy tasks like reviewing scans in Epic.

A legacy of firsts

Vervint worked with University of Michigan Health-West to launch MetroConnect on Epic in the early 2000s, keeping patient information secure, updated, and available to both patients and medical professionals whenever they needed it. Health-West was the first healthcare system in the region to use electronic medical records in an ambulatory setting, back in 2006, and by 2009 it was the first in the area to link EMRs across the hospital, labs, clinics, surgical suites, outpatient centers, physicians, and other personnel into one connected system.

As the health system’s then-President put it, “No matter where you are in the system, MetroConnect ensures our team will have up-to-date, accurate information at their fingertips,” a game-changer for both providers and patients alike.

Image of someone wearing medical protective gear working on a computer.

Untethering care from the desktop

Physicians, nurses, and other staff rarely stay in one place to deliver care, but the technology hadn’t caught up: computer towers were tied to individual workstations, and booting up or logging in to a new device ate into time healthcare professionals didn’t have. Some staff had even resorted to sharing credentials just to move faster. Health-West’s CIO proposed a virtual desktop infrastructure so users could access their own desktop from any endpoint location in 10 seconds or less.

Vervint helped write, test, and roll out a browser-based VDI solution that connected roaming users to the EMR system, with all computing handled on servers in the data center so users needed only a monitor and keyboard at any workstation. As one doctor described it, “This virtual desktop technology allows me to log in from any place that I want, from home, from work, from any place out of town. And when I log in, I see the applications as if I’m standing in my office or at my administrative site. It doesn’t matter where I am.”

Solving for speed, then staying for the long haul

Early on, graphics processing created slowdowns and crashes even during basic tasks like reviewing medical images in Epic. Vervint worked closely with Health-West, NVIDIA, and HPE to build a one-of-a-kind solution incorporating pre-installed NVIDIA GPUs into HPE servers for the first time, offloading server-side CPU usage and fixing the bottleneck. A pilot with 95 users came back overwhelmingly positive, and the rollout went on to save an estimated 1,600 hours annually, roughly 50 minutes a day for nurses and 30 minutes a day for doctors.

When Health-West’s primary engineer left mid-rollout, Vervint stepped in with a flexible consulting arrangement that let the organization draw on different skill sets as needed throughout the project, and stayed on afterward to provide ongoing support. Today, Vervint continues to serve as Health-West’s Epic and VDI architectural design consultant.

With nearly two decades of firsts behind them and a flexible, secure technology foundation in place, University of Michigan Health-West is positioned to keep bringing new access and new innovation to the patients and providers of West Michigan, wherever care happens to find them.

“From what was a disaster to what has become a miracle, I am grateful and indebted to such dedication, service, and excellence! You all rose to the challenge and found a way to save our situation. I want to thank Vervint for your true ‘partnership.’ All I can say is that I’m grateful to work side by side with such a team. You are part of what makes University of Michigan Health-West special.”