GE Healthcare partnered with HP to design a new high-availability technology platform to support its Centricity Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) services. The solution implemented on HP Integrity servers and StorageWorks technology provides reliable, scalable infrastructure to help healthcare providers improve operations and patient care. The open, cost-effective architecture enables GE to offer the EDI services affordably and meet emerging opportunities. As a result, GE Healthcare is prepared to support new healthcare services while its customers benefit from advanced electronic management capabilities.

1. GE HEALTHCARE
Case study
Success story
10.5 pt Interstate regular
GE Healthcare’s new Centricity EDI services platform
delivers high availability, scalability cost-effectively;
as a result, the company is ready to meet any
emerging opportunity or customer need
It’s exciting when technology creates whole new cash flows. Processes that were once handled
markets. But it takes more than just good ideas to manually are automated and can be performed
leverage emerging opportunities. around the clock. And by managing processes with
technology—such as verifying patient insurance
That’s why GE Healthcare IT turned to HP to
eligibility—Centricity EDI frees administrative staff
help design a technology platform to support its
to perform tasks that are more valuable to patient
Centricity® Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
care and satisfaction levels. The solution is also
Services offering.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Digital healthcare Act-compliant (HIPAA) and Electronic Healthcare
Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC)
GE Centricity EDI, part of GE Healthcare IT’s
certified to protect patient privacy and help
Centricity portfolio, leverages technology to help
providers meet regulatory requirements.
healthcare providers improve patient care, process
claims more quickly and efficiently, streamline “Our EDI solution gives providers a way to
operations, trim revenue cycles, and improve implement reliable, highly-available, state-of-the-

2. GE HEALTHCARE
Case study
Success story
“HP proactively managed the relationships between all of the vendors who
contribute to our solution to ensure they were on board with our
requirements.”
— Milan Caha, Centricity EDI System Services Manager, GE Healthcare IT
art practice management without having to make underlying the Integrity architecture, GE Healthcare
capital investments in hardware and software IT gains flexible capacity, secured availability, and
infrastructure,” explains Milan Caha, Centricity EDI simplified management to maximize its return on
System Services Manager, GE Healthcare IT. IT investment. “Integrity servers are the best on
the market from a price-performance standpoint,”
That’s the value proposition to GE Healthcare
Caha says. “They meet our requirements from a cost
customers. Caha’s job is to make sure that the
perspective, they are highly manageable, and they
solution is implemented on a technology platform
provide us with the horsepower and agility we need
that delivers on this promise and can be offered to
to deliver our applications to our users.”
providers at a reasonable price-point.
Another central component of the new environment:
Leveraging a long-standing relationship
a redundant Fibre Channel storage area network
“The EDI service was first launched in 2001 on a (SAN), spanning two data centers via high-speed, low-
Windows®-based platform,” Caha explains. That latency SONET ring technology.
worked for awhile, but with time it became clear that
“Everything is redundant,” Caha says. “One of our
a change was needed. “The business was growing. In
data centers could go down and our users will barely
order to sustain that growth and remain competitive,
notice, if at all. Providers who use this service know
we decided to look at different technology options.”
they can run their organizations 24 hours a day,
GE Healthcare IT engaged the Standish Group, seven days a week.” The hardware itself has also
an independent consulting group, to validate its proven exceedingly reliable. “In our experience, HP
understanding of the market potential, as well as products are rock solid. Since we began testing and
provide some high-level direction on what hardware through production, for example, we’ve experienced
and software systems would achieve the most no unscheduled downtime attributable to SAN-
attractive return on investment. The consultant’s related issues.”
recommendation: Retire the Windows-based
The implementation
architecture, which was both proprietary and
relatively unstable, and move to open, industry- In addition to helping GE Healthcare IT design the
standard technologies. “High availability was a key system, HP also helped implement it. That included
priority,” Caha says. “Our customers need to know both technical support as well as a fair amount of
that our service will be up and running when they are planning and behind-the-scenes legwork. The EDI
ready to access it.” Centricity solution, for instance, leverages Sun’s
SeeBeyond eGate software, a Web services-based
With that recommendation in hand, it was natural
distributed integration platform for application
for GE Healthcare IT to turn, next, to HP. “We had a
connectivity, data transformation and transactions
long-standing and close working relationship with
and messaging functionality. When HP was first
HP,” Caha says. “We knew they would have both the
engaged to provide the new EDI platform, the eGate
technology and the expertise to help us design and
software wasn’t certified on Integrity servers—so
implement our new platform.”
HP deployed technical resources to jump-start the
The two companies decided on a 64-bit version of the certification process. “HP proactively managed
EDI solution running on HP Integrity servers based on the relationships between all of the vendors who
Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 2 processor technology. contributed to our solution to ensure they were on
With the HP-UX 11i v2 and v3 operating system

3. 10.5 pt Interstate regular
board with our requirements,” Caha says. Besides the “With HP’s technology, we’re able to scale as needed
eGate software, more than 4,000 applications, including to launch and support virtually any electronic service
leading healthcare-related software, are certified on for which a business case can be developed,” Caha
Integrity servers. says. “We can evaluate business cases on the basis
of market potential or customer needs, knowing that
The implementation was performed using a phased
from a technology standpoint, we can quickly meet our
approach. Hardware includes a mix of entry and midrange
performance and capacity requirements. Our capacity is
HP Integrity servers clustered with Symantec/Veritas
always tightly aligned with our business needs.”
Cluster File System with HP Serviceguard; the SAN
comprises 12 HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays High performance, cost-effectively
(EVAs) with 437 TB raw disk space. These systems are
Another key benefit of the HP platform is that it’s an open
covered by HP support, including high availability, 24x7
architecture solution. As a result, GE Healthcare IT is able
support on the data centers’ mission critical servers.
to keep its technology overhead costs down. This, in turn,
These support contracts, along with the HP Performance
enables their EDI Centricity solutions to be cost-effective
Manager and Systems Insight Manager software
for GE Healthcare customers.
installed to manage the systems, provide another layer
“Many of our customers are healthcare providers
of assurance that the platform will meet GE’s availability
that can’t fund their own high-end, high-performance
requirements.
technology platforms,” Caha says. “They might be smaller
Being prepared through scalability
hospitals, or stand-alone clinics or practices. They know
While high availability was one of GE Healthcare IT’s main technology can help them improve their productivity
priorities for its new EDI platform, it wasn’t the only one. and process efficiency, but they don’t have the capital to
Another was scalability. “The market for outsourcing implement it internally.”
digital healthcare management is evolving rapidly,” Caha
For these customers, GE Healthcare’s EDI Centricity
says. “We need to be prepared to support new services
solutions offer the best of both worlds. They get the
as we identify opportunities, or as our customers request
electronic practice management functionality to manage
them.”
administrative and clinical processes efficiently and
There’s the electronic medical record business, for deliver high levels of patient care. And they can fund it as
example; GE Healthcare IT can give healthcare providers an operations expense, paying for it as they use it, instead
a platform for transmitting critical patient data among of as a capital expenditure.
hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and specialist facilities,
“I’ve taken customers on tours of our new data
such as radiology clinics.
centers, and they are awed,” Caha says. “They see
Another emerging trend is in the area of Health our HP Integrity servers, the way we have our
Information Exchange to facilitate access and retrieval of clusters configured, and they recognize that
patient clinical data. The patient-centered management ours is a truly cutting-edge facility. It’s
services are often promoted by Regional Health technology that would otherwise be
Information Organizations (RHIOs). These services beyond their reach—but through our
leverage technology to help doctors and patients monitor EDI Centricity programs, they
patients’ health conditions. To manage patients with have access to it. It’s truly a
diabetes, for example, certain lab test results might be winning scenario for GE
automatically flagged and routed to physicians, giving Healthcare, for HP, and
“HP combines a personal touch with
them more timely notification of their patients’ status. for our customers.”
quality technology and competitive
Yet another possible niche is clinical data services: With
pricing. It’s an unbeatable
the patients’ consent, their data is stripped of identifying
combination, and it’s the reason
information (such as their names) and then aggregated
we’ve had such a long-standing
and provided to researchers, who can use it to gather
relationship with HP—and the reason
statistical information regarding outcomes of different
we chose them to help us architect
therapies.
and implement our new EDI
Centricity platform.”
— Milan Caha, Centricity EDI
System Services Manager,
GE Healthcare IT

4. GE HEALTHCARE
Case study
Success story
Challenges: Solution: Results: 10.5 pt Interstate regular
• GE Healthcare IT needed to Primary hardware Approach
deliver on its value proposition • HP Integrity high-end and • GE Healthcare IT partnered with
About Intel® Itanium® 2
to healthcare providers by midrange servers based on HP to design a high-availability,
processors
implementing a reliable, cost- Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 redundant environment
Get the scalable
performance and effective platform for its EDI architecture based on HP Integrity and
reliability you need with
Centricity healthcare practice • Two HP Integrity rx8640 StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual
servers based on Intel®
Itanium® 2 processors. management services. Servers Array technology.
Intel® Itanium® 2
• Two HP Integrity rx8620
processor-based servers
Servers IT improvements
provide unbeatable
flexibility for RISC. An
• Four HP Integrity rx6600 Server • Cluster-based configuration
unmatched choice in OS
• Three HP Integrity rx5670 and redundancy ensure high
environments provides
flexibility, now and in Servers availability
the future, that allows
• Seven HP Integrity rx4640 • Reliability: no unscheduled
IT to quickly respond
to changing business Servers downtime attributable to
environments. Optimized
• One HP Integrity rx3600 Server SAN-related issues or Integrity
for business analytics,
• Two HP Integrity rx2660 server hardware failures
you gain faster and
more detailed analysis
Servers • Scalability of Integrity servers
of treatment outcomes
• Seven HP Integrity rx2620 and StorageWorks technology
and quality metrics, plus
consolidated patient care, Servers enables platform to be expanded
practice-management, and
• Twelve HP StorageWorks as new needs are identified
billing information across
the extended healthcare Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVAs)
organization—all at lower
cost than RISC.
Business Benefits
Primary software • Architecture aligned with GE
• HP-UX 11i v2 & v3 operating Healthcare IT business needs
system • Cost-effectiveness supports
• HP Operations Manager profitability of EDI services
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides software • Performance sustains GE
transformational medical
• HP Systems Insight Manager Healthcare IT competitiveness
technologies and
services that are shaping software • GE customers able to improve
a new age of patient
patient care with sophisticated,
care. Our expertise in
24x7 EDI technology
medical imaging and
information technologies,
HP Services
medical diagnostics,
• HP support, including 24x7
patient monitoring
systems, performance support on mission critical
improvement, drug
services
discovery, and
biopharmaceutical • Project management and
manufacturing
technical advisory services
technologies is helping
clinicians around the world
re-imagine new ways to
predict, diagnose, inform,
Why Intel and HP?
treat and monitor disease,
so patients can live their • Leadership and long-term association
lives to the fullest.
• Robust business solutions
• Continuity, knowledge and skill
Headquartered in the
United Kingdom, GE
Healthcare is a $17 billion
unit of General Electric ©2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP
Company (NYSE: GE). products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as
constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Quotes provided are customer
Worldwide, GE Healthcare
comments. This customer’s results depended upon its unique business and IT environment, the way it used HP products and services and other factors.
employs more than
These results may not be typical; your results may vary.
46,000 people committed
to serving healthcare Intel, Itanium and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft
professionals and their and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
patients in more than 100
4AA2-1338ENW, July 2008
countries.
www.gehealthcare.com