Germany’s Oldenburg Hospital (Klinikum Oldenburg) ensures highly-productive mobile work processes in all specialist disciplines and departments

Ordering patients’ meals with an iPad, mobile access to the patient files and ambulances equipped with iPads: Anyone visiting Oldenburg Hospital can easily see that this institution lives and breathes mobility.

“We can’t manage without mobile devices,”Ralf Boldt, head of the IT department at Oldenburg Hospital, is convinced. “Mobility has created new working processes and as an IT department, we must support them.” 

With regard to the devices, a standardized mobile operating system was important to the IT department, meaning Apple devices were selected. To use the 200 iPods, iPads, and iPad minis provided by the hospital securely and productively, the organization began the search for an enterprise mobility solution. After an extended evaluation phase, the solution from a market leader was introduced in 2013. But satisfaction proved short-lived.

After only a year in use, the IT department realized that the system had reached its limits. When an update of the domain structure was due, an adjustment became necessary due to outdated name conventions.

Since the MDM system used worked with the Principal SamAccountName (pre-Windows2000), this would have caused a huge amount of administrative work, including collecting all the devices, and a completely new roll-out process.

“It was important for us to have a standardized structure for the login systems,” says Ralf Boldt. 

Since the system in use did not satisfy these conditions, it was decided to look for alternatives: the existing system was replaced by Cortado Corporate Server, with which the IT department was already familiar with from the evaluation phase. Through their intensive work with the solution, the IT department knew that it fulfilled the requirements. Since Cortado Corporate 

Server fits very well to the Active Directory structure, the solution was able to be integrated without any problems and user names could be used in a standardized way.

But other aspects were also important to the IT experts at the hospital: According to Mr. Boldt, Cortado Corporate Server had a much simpler user interface. There was just as much complexity behind the system as with the software that it was replacing, but the new application was considerably easier for the staff to use and was simple for IT to manage. You don’t have to click your way through hundreds of menus.

“We then very quickly got the system up and running,” said Mr. Boldt. “Thanks to what can really be described as exemplary support from the manufacturer.” By the end of 2015, 300 employees are expected to work with mobile devices, and in the following year Ralf Boldt reckons this could be increased to 600 devices.

There are a wide variety of possible uses. For example, nursing staff can find out directly at the patient’s bedside what he wants to eat, and can pass this on via an appropriate app. In pain therapy, current symptoms are evaluated and recorded by mobile device. In the geriatric department too, staff are working with iOS devices that are managed via Cortado Corporate Server.

In this way, hospital staff can investigate who has been given which treatments. The IT department staff too, work with Cortado Corporate Server and access the internal ticket system via mobile devices. Thus they can see which work needs to be done immediately in their direct vicinity, saving valuable time, and increasing reaction times

Ambulance staff are equipped with iPads and can instantly access the required data en-route, reacting quicker to the current medical situation. Staff from the ambulance service can find out on the go where they are to collect patients. Finally, doctors and nursing staff access the digital patient files, including doctor’s referral letters, diagnoses, X-rays, and lab findings. In Oldenburg Hospital, only apps developed by third parties are used, not in-house developments.

Ralf Boldt believes that there are more possible uses as well. “New ideas are emerging all the time, about how and by whom the system can sensibly be used to improve work-flows.”

ABOUT KLINIKUM OLDENBURG:

Oldenburg Hospital provides a wide range of medical care with around 37,000 patients in full and part-time care per year. In addition, around 95,000 outpatients are treated a year – and the number is rising. At present the hospital has a total of 832 beds.

For more information, visit http://corporateserver.cortado.com/