Novell Secure Web Services Solution is the Prescription for Hartford Hospital

For Hartford Hospital, one of the top cardiovascular facilities in the country, the decision to give doctors and staff members secure remote access to hospital applications was easy: Broader and faster access to medical information would lower the cost of administration and allow doctors to be more responsive to patients. Just exactly how to do that was tougher. After evaluating approaches that included using a VPN, the hospital turned to a secure Web services solution based on Novell® exteNd™ and Novell Nsure™ to realize its business goals.

"Early on, it became clear that Novell was the right choice for this project - giving us the integration and identity management capabilities to build and secure our move to Web services," said John Destefano, consulting analyst at Hartford Hospital. "Already we've seen a 50 percent return on investment; and the solution has been an important part of bringing Hartford Hospital into compliance with government regulations like HIPAA and HL7."

The first step for Hartford Hospital was to create Web services from its existing applications, many of which were based on mainframes. Using Novell exteNd Composer™, the hospital's small IT staff needed just three weeks to create a new Web application for patient accounting, as well as an epidemiological system to track the causes, incidence and control of diseases. Novell exteNd Director™ then provided a portal interface for fast, convenient access to these and other applications.

"With Novell exteNd, it's like buying a portal with Web developers in the box," Destefano said. "We saw a long training period with other development technologies. Using Novell exteNd, we get a standards-based platform and can quickly make new technology available to a team with limited Java*-programming expertise."

With the portal in place, Hartford Hospital needed to secure it, and did so with a Novell Nsure secure identity management solution. As part of the Nsure solution, Novell eDirectory™ provides a central repository for user information and access rights, allowing the company to determine who has access to what, based on a user's role and responsibilities at the hospital. Novell iChain® then enforces those access rights, requiring authentication to the portal and providing single sign-on to all Web applications. Novell BorderManager® acts in conjunction with a corporate firewall, providing additional security against external threats. Rounding out the Nsure solution, the hospital also uses Novell SecureLogin to provide single sign-on to non-Web applications.

Thanks to Novell exteNd and Nsure, Hartford Hospital physicians and staff now have personalized access - whether at home or in the office - to real-time patient information; and that information remains private and only available to authorized users. Further, with single sign-on to the portal applications, the hospital anticipates a 10-15 percent decrease in helpdesk calls.

The secure Web services project has also helped to cut administration costs dramatically. The new Web application for patient accounting alone has streamlined claims processing, creating a savings of $80,000 to date.

"Novell is leading the charge to help organizations like Hartford Hospital drive real business value from secure Web services - giving new life to legacy systems and lowering the cost of existing business processes," said Novell Senior Vice President David Litwack. "Thanks to the combination of Novell Nsure and exteNd, Novell is uniquely capable of helping companies not only integrate and Web-enable enterprise systems, but also deliver them securely to authorized users through secure identity management."

For more information about Novell Nsure secure identity management solutions, go to http://www.novell.com/nsure. For more information about Novell exteNd Web application development, go to http://www.novell.com/extend.