LumiraDx Care Solution’s INRstar is the UK market leader for Clinical Decision Support Software (CDSS) for anticoagulation management, and currently underpins over 2,500 anticoagulation clinics in both primary and secondary care. Providing a comprehensive management solution, INRstar ensures that health professionals can safely navigate through the increasingly complex decisions brought about by the emergence of new anticoagulation treatment options.
Going forward, INRstar’s developer, LumiraDx, knew that technology would be absolutely key to the continued successful delivery of this vital patient service.
Despite its market dominance, LumiraDx remains an ambitious and progressive solutions provider. In respect of its INRstar product, it is focused on three primary objectives:
LumiraDx’s ambitious targets meant that it would also need to plan to upscale its IT infrastructure.
First and foremost, it needed a solid, scalable platform that could effortlessly handle thousands of users on demand; availability was also critical for such a vital piece of clinical software. And with such high stakes as patient safety in play, there had to be a fast, responsive support wrap to any IT provision.
Explains LumiraDx’s Michael Nicholls: “We took a good hard look at the IT challenges ahead of us and we concluded that moving forward we’d be best served by migrating away from on-premise back-end systems and local practice installations; our
preference was to entrust a new centralised delivery mechanism to a hosted, Cloud- based environment. That meant finding the right IT partner, so the search was on.”
Obviously we could only assess providers with N3 accreditation, and Redcentric’s credentials in this respect were outstanding. But we needed to be reassured in other areas too: the strength and reliability of the platform; the scalability and adaptability of the services taken; and the calibre of both the day-to-day and longer-term strategic help we would get from our new partner. Redcentric impressed on all counts, from their industrial grade network and data centre estate to their 24/7 UK-based operations personnel.
After a thorough and diligent tender process, Redcentric was given the nod, outperforming the competition by ticking every box, most notably in respect of its N3 pedigree, quality of infrastructure, flexibility, support and account management.
Redcentric took LumiraDx into the Cloud through its Virtual Server Hosting solution with N3 connectivity. This saw the provisioning of virtual server resource in the Reading data centre for the running of the latest software version, INRstar N3; plus the initiation of direct links into the N3 network opening up fast, secure access for the thousands of healthcare professionals who use the software.
Michael is keen to stress how much of a significant advance this represented for LumiraDx and its INRstar product. “We had always ‘done’ technology well but our own high standards and growth plans meant we had to exploit the new paradigm that Cloud offers.
Today we can be confident that, regardless of how many new sites we take on, we can scale up our resources dynamically; that the capacity and resilience embedded in the platform will cope with the usage spikes that are inevitable in this clinical area; and that should we experience any issues, the Redcentric team is instantly on the case.
In addition, software delivery is now so streamlined, with centralised hosting rather than local LAN-based installations, that we are able to focus our efforts far more on product development and the customer experience than on systems and network ‘housekeeping’; the update process – and we’re adding functionality every couple of months – has also been greatly simplified and accelerated, to the benefit of our users.
Because of the N3-facilitated inter-connectivity, we’re establishing new protocols for information exchange – patients passed from GPs to hospitals and back to GPs no longer have to suffer their paperwork being shunted about and arriving late or not at all, but instead can have their treatment history transferred safely between authorised locations.”.
We had always ‘done’ technology well but our own high standards and growth plans meant we had to exploit the new paradigm that Cloud offers. Today we can be confident that, regardless of how many new sites we take on, we can scale up our resources dynamically.
Michael believes that the partnership with Redcentric has put LumiraDx’s operating model for INRstar firmly in the ‘best in class’ category, and that it can now push on reassured that IT will remain perfectly aligned to the needs of the business in this time of rapid growth.
Increased resilience and availability The service has to be there when the doctors, clinicians and patients need it – downtime means inconvenience, extra cost and the potential for putting patient safety at risk.
Enhanced business continuity – Moving to a highly redundant environment has reinforced LumiraDx’s commitment to those 24/7 availability standards, removing the failure points common in on-premise systems.
Greater cost certainty and cost efficiency – As a growing business LumiraDx needs predictable pricing models to help it plan and invest appropriately; it also demands value-based IT provision so it can run as lean as possible without compromising the ‘platinum’ service it offers its users.
Improved support function – The INRstar N3 platform has the backup of the Redcentric support team 24/7, ensuring a rapid response to any technical issues in a hugely mission-critical operating environment.
Faster updates and easier administration – LumiraDx is no longer having to look after thousands of individual sites in terms of software updates, instead just updating its central servers the once for clients then to access the latest version simultaneously. That time can be reinvested back into the front-end product and customer care.
Enhanced patient care – The transmission of electronic patient data instead of reliance on vulnerable paper records doesn’t just cut administrative time but also ring-fences patient safety through the instant availability of up to the minute information.