CASE STUDY
State University of New York Health Science Center.
Webair Provides Customized Disaster Recovery and IT Resilience Solutions for the State University of New York Health Science Center.
As a growing number of healthcare facilities adopt transformative digital technologies and strategies, Webair provides comprehensive Disaster Recovery and IT resiliency services to ensure the security and availability of critical medical records and information.
Background
Medical centers around the world are embracing digital transformation, implementing enterprise-wide applications to enhance clinical and financial systems, and adopting the practice of maintaining Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). These innovations have provided healthcare organizations with the ability to better serve patients with enhanced agility and accuracy, putting critical information at medical professionals’ fingertips. However, ensuring the security and reliability of this private medical data is a difficult task. Without the necessary disaster recovery and IT resiliency systems in place, medical centers put themselves at risk of security breaches and increase their vulnerability to malicious cyberattacks that can paralyze operations, preventing the organization from providing life-saving services
“When disaster recovery works properly, there’s no real measurable win, however it’s priceless in the face of an adverse event. By customizing a colocation solution to suit our individual needs, Webair has provided SUNY Downstate Medical Center with peace of mind, as we can rest assured sensitive information is fully secure. Webair’s expert technology staff is thorough in the management of our solution and well-versed in the technology necessary to support our needs, making it clear that our data is in good hands.”
— Dilip Nath, AVP and Deputy Chief Information Officer, SUNY Downstate
The Challenge
The State University of New York Health Science Center, more commonly known as SUNY Downstate Medical Center, is one of the nation’s leading urban medical centers, providing healthcare services to the underserved community of Brooklyn. As the only academic medical center in the region, SUNY Downstate also provides world-class education for students within healthcare, nursing and other medical-related fields of study. In addition, SUNY Downstate serves as a leading research facility and houses the first State BioTech incubator.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center is dedicated to enhancing its efficiency and business agility in order to provide high-quality healthcare services to Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents. In order to leverage the necessary technology to enable automation and modernization of its medical services, SUNY Downstate required the help of a managed infrastructure provider that could offer redundant, HIPAA-compliant services backed by extensive technical expertise within the healthcare industry for the secure and reliable hosting of its EMRs and applications.
The Solution
Webair now provides SUNY Downstate with a fully-customized hybrid IT solution, offering comprehensive Disaster Recovery and IT resilience services, as well as managed cloud and colocation solutions, utilizing redundant, HIPAA-compliant mission-critical infrastructure. To ensure enhanced security and latency with end to-end encryption of sensitive data, Webair built a direct, secure connection from its Tier III data center in New York to the SUNY Downstate Medical Center that is completely air-gapped from the public internet.
“Webair provides an important part of our high availability and disaster recovery strategy. Backing up our data in real time securely to Webair Cloud gives us an extra layer of protection against ransomware, disaster, fraud, and other threats that we face each day in Healthcare. This hybrid solution of diversifying between Prem and Cloud gives us the flexibility to respond quickly to the needs of the organization.”
— Roy Sookhoo, VP & Chief Information Officer, SUNY Downstate Medical Center
When providing comprehensive DRaaS solutions, Webair takes ownership of the full disaster recovery process, including failover, fail back and testing, and its expert team proactively monitors and manages the entire IT environment. In addition, the security of the physical data center and encrypted network connectivity at SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s premises are covered by Webair’s BAAs and industry-leading SLAs. SUNY Downstate Medical Center is one of many New York based hospital systems that are part of Webair’s portfolio of clients. Webair services are now available via Office of General Services (OGS) state contracts, enabling fast and easy implementation of high-quality solutions at a cost effective price.
Results
As a result of this partnership, Webair was able to meet SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s immediate colocation, Disaster Recovery and IT resiliency needs while offering the flexibility necessary to scale for future requirements, supporting multiple legacy healthcare platforms, such as physical and AIX-based solutions as well as multi-cloud hybrid deployments. With help from Webair, SUNY Downstate Medical Center plans to implement additional IT resilience and private cloud solutions in a phased approach to further enhance its digital transformation strategy.
