Holland Hospital, a 209-bed hospital in Western Michigan that is nationally recognized for quality practices and exceptional patient care, is implementing the InterSystems Ensemble rapid integration and development platform as its enterprise integration engine. Holland Hospital chose Ensemble to address several integration challenges such as the need to interconnect more systems across the hospital and to integrate with electronic medical record (EMR) systems at affiliated physician groups. Ensemble, which is used to develop and integrate mission-critical applications, leverage previous software investments through composite applications, and establish an enterprise service bus or SOA infrastructure, offered significant advantages over Holland Hospital's legacy integration platform.
"We wanted to add more interconnectivity internally as well as connect to physicians and multiple external organizations. Our previous platform didn't offer a good upgrade path for achieving our objectives," states Randy Paruch, director of Information Systems, Holland Hospital. The hospital has completely converted all legacy interfaces over to the Ensemble platform and has also connected the hospital's laboratory information system, radiology information system, and other internal applications to the hospital's hospital information system (HIS) and billing systems. "We needed a system that could handle an expanding number of new connections and facilities and that's what we received with Ensemble," says Paruch.
"We're also adding multiple interfaces to make care delivery as seamless and easy as possible for physicians," Paruch adds. "Not only does this enable improved care delivery, but the easy connectivity means increased business opportunities for both our hospital and the physician groups with whom we work." The healthcare delivery network is currently using Ensemble to connect Holland Hospital's HIS with other EMR systems in use at several physician groups. And, in addition to providing enterprise-wide integration, future plans may lead to Holland Hospital evaluating the InterSystems DeepSee business intelligence software to enable trends analysis and provide early warning of system problems.
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