Remote working for healthcare professionals with UDS VDI

• Name: Los Arcos del Mar Menor General University Hospital

• Sector: Public Health

• Number of employees: 2,000

• Location: San Javier (Murcia, Spain)

During the state of alarm decreed to deal with Covid-19, most health services looked for the best way to stay operational while guaranteeing the protection of workers and minimizing the risk of contagion. Los Arcos del Mar Menor General University Hospital (HULAMM in Spanish) took advantage of its commitment to UDS Enterprise to offer the option of working from home to professionals who could perform their tasks remotely. “Thanks to this software we were able to implement remote working urgently in our hospital and help the Murcian Health Service (SMS in Spanish) to provide this service to specific groups coordinated from the central services,” assures Gaspar Rico Falcó, Manager of the VDI project directed by José María Giménez García, Head of the IT Service of the HULAMM.

The platform with UDS Enterprise enables remote work for the different departments of this center: physicians, support technicians, IT, management and maintenance personnel, external companies… In addition, the IT department of HULAMM has joined forces with SMS to take advantage of this infrastructure and provide virtual desktops for remote working to professionals in Pharmacology, Oncology, Hematology, and even Microbiology, the unit responsible for analyzing PCR tests.

HULAMM’s commitment to desktop virtualization with UDS Enterprise was key to offering the possibility of working from home to hundreds of professionals distributed accross different public hospitals in the Region of Murcia during the state of alarm. Despite the complexity of providing service to very diverse user groups, who need different tools for their daily work, “it was not difficult to carry out the deployment. With UDS Enterprise we were able to have it up and running in a very short time,” explains the project manager.

They set up different desktop templates for each work area so that professionals could work from home in the same way as they do in the hospital. “This way we make sure that each employee has exactly the tools he needs. The feedback we are receiving confirms that we have succeeded with the solution, since all users are very happy with the performance of the platform,” says Rico.

The HULAMM Management is also very satisfied with UDS Enterprise, not only for its efficiency in facilitating telecommuting, but also for its advanced functionalities. “It allows us to extract usage data quite easily to generate statistics that we are providing to the hospital management for control of remote working,” indicates the technical manager.

In addition, the unique features of the VDI broker have allowed them to shield the security of their systems. “Remote working connections are made through VPN and a personal certificate is required to access. We also identify the networks from which users connect, which allows us to distinguish the external connections to the hospital from the internal ones and establish a different connection protocol for each one,” he explains.

VDI WITH UDS ENTERPRISE TO SIMPLIFY AND CENTRALIZE IT MANAGEMENT OF THE HULAMM

HULAMM’s plans with UDS Enterprise have always gone beyond remote working. This health center considered desktop virtualization with this VDI broker as a daily work tool within the hospital for all staff.

With this technology, IT management is simplified to the maximum. All software installation, administration and maintenance tasks are performed in a centralized and automated way. In addition, among many other advantages, they ensure that the workplaces are standardized and accessible at any time, from any location and device, without compromising the security of data or IT systems.

The choice of UDS Enterprise as the cornerstone for HULAMM to enjoy all these benefits was no accident. “We were looking for the solution that best adapted to our needs to replace the software we used, since it was discontinued. We analyzed different solutions and, after the tests we carried out, the one we liked the most was UDS Enterprise,” comments Rico.

After several months testing all the functionalities with the help of Fortics Ingeniería Informática and with a trial version running for more than a year, their assessment of the software is truly positive: “We recommend its adoption to any organization in the sector without any doubt. Its simplicity, power, and versatility make it the perfect VDI solution for this type of environments.”

Fortics Ingeniería Informática performed advisory tasks, installation and fine-tuning of the platform. “Virginio García, Head of Fortics, has done an excellent job. In fact, another of the strengths when deciding on UDS Enterprise was the accessibility to the 24×7 technical support that he offered us,” says Rico.

As a Virtual Cable Gold Partner, the Fortics staff has all the technical knowledge required to make the appropriate configurations aimed at obtaining the best performance of the solution. They are also perfectly qualified to provide first-level professional support .

VDI INFRASTRUCTURE

• Broker: UDS Enterprise

• Hypervisor: VMware vSphere

• Connection protocols: RDP and HTML5

• VDI OS: Windows 10

• VDI access OS: Any