Cloud storage becoming popular among General Practices
General Practices are taking up Pegasus Health’s hosted application service, giving them centrally managed and remotely accessible IT infrastructure.
Hosted Applications is offered through Support Plus – a suite of IT and HR services designed to simplify the running of primary and community care businesses.
With Hosted Applications, a practice’s patient management system, desktop applications and data are stored securely in the cloud.
Pegasus Health’s Chief Information Officer Symon McHerron says the feedback from practices has been positive. “It’s more hands off for them and they receive a stable and robust service.”
Ara Institute of Canterbury started using Support Plus in October 2015 for their Health Centre, which offers students and staff appointments with nurses, a General Practitioner and counsellors.
Ara’s Chief Information Officer Mark Marshall says the Institute wanted to outsource the hosting of their patient management system, Medtech. "Hosted Applications is first class. It is everything a managed service should be,” Mark says.
Hosted Applications is growing in popularity because it saves practices from relying on backups, purchasing hardware or using IT professionals to get systems up and running again, Symon says.
“It is secure and stable. People can log on when they’re at work, home or any remote location.”
The system is monitored from Pegasus Health’s office in Bealey Avenue, Christchurch and data is mirrored to a storage area at an alternative site and backed up daily.
Symon says the next piece of work for the IT team is to look at providing a hosted telephone service. “This would be more cost effective than every practice having its own phone lines and infrastructure. Practices will get cheaper phone bills and new phone handsets, reducing their upfront investment as they would just pay a monthly fee.”
With a team of dedicated and experienced health sector HR and IT professionals, Support Plus can assist with a range of services including recruitment, HR consultancy, health and safety and employment relations, hosted applications and much more.
Visit supportplus.co.nz to find out about these services.
