Case Study
SUNY Health Sciences Center:
Disaster Recovery
& IT Resiliency
Business Challenge
As a growing number of healthcare facilities adopt transformative digital technologies and strategies, Opti9 provides comprehensive Disaster Recovery and IT resiliency services to ensure the security and availability of critical medical records and information.
Medical centers around the world are embracing digital transformation, implementing enterprise-wide applications to enhance clinical and financial systems, and adopting the practice of maintaining Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). These innovations have provided healthcare organizations with the ability to better serve patients with enhanced agility and accuracy, putting critical information at medical professionals’ fingertips. However, ensuring the security and reliability of this private medical data is a difficult task. Without the necessary disaster recovery and IT resiliency systems in place, medical centers put themselves at risk of security breaches and increase their vulnerability to malicious cyberattacks that can paralyze operations, preventing the organization from providing life-saving services.
The State University of New York Health Science Center, more commonly known as SUNY Downstate Medical Center, is one of the nation’s leading urban medical centers, providing healthcare services to the underserved community of Brooklyn. As the only academic medical center in the region, SUNY Downstate also provides world-class education for students within healthcare, nursing, and other medical-related fields of study. In addition, SUNY Downstate serves as a leading research facility and houses the first State BioTech incubator.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center is dedicated to enhancing its efficiency and business agility in order to provide high-quality healthcare services to Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents. In order to leverage the necessary technology to enable automation and modernization of its medical services, SUNY Downstate required the help of a managed infrastructure provider that could offer redundant, HIPAA-compliant services backed by extensive technical expertise within the healthcare industry for the secure and reliable hosting of its EMRs and applications.
When disaster recovery works properly, there’s no real measurable win, however, it’s priceless in the face of an adverse event. By customizing a colocation solution to suit our individual needs, Opti9 has provided SUNY Downstate Medical Center with peace of mind, as we can rest assured sensitive information is fully secure. Opti9’s expert technology staff is thorough in the management of our solution and well-versed in the technology necessary to support our needs, making it clear that our data is in good hands.
Dilip Nath
AVP and Deputy Chief Information Officer of SUNY Downstate
The Opti9 Solution
Opti9 now provides SUNY Downstate with a fully-customized hybrid IT solution, offering comprehensive Disaster Recovery and IT resilience services, as well as managed cloud and colocation solutions, utilizing redundant, HIPAA-compliant mission-critical infrastructure. To ensure enhanced security and latency with end-to-end encryption of sensitive data, Opti9 built a direct, secure connection from its Tier III data center in New York to SUNY Downstate Medical Center that is completely air-gapped from the public internet.
When providing comprehensive DRaaS solutions, Opti9 takes ownership of the full disaster recovery process, including failover, failback and testing, and its expert team proactively monitors and manages the entire IT environment. In addition, the security of the physical data center and encrypted network connectivity at SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s premises are covered by Opti9’s BAAs and industry-leading SLAs.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center is one of many New York-based hospital systems that are part
of Opti9’s portfolio of clients. Opti9 services are now available via Office of General Services (OGS) state contracts, enabling fast and easy implementation of high-quality solutions at a
cost-effective price.
Opti9 provides an important part of our high availability and disaster recovery strategy. Backing up our data in real-time securely to Opti9 Cloud gives us an extra layer of protection against ransomware, disaster, fraud, and other threats that we face each day in Healthcare. This hybrid solution of diversifying between Prem and Cloud gives us the flexibility to respond quickly to the needs of the organization.
Roy Sookhoo
VP and Chief Information Officer of SUNY Downstate
The Results
As a result of this partnership, Opti9 was able to meet SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s immediate colocation, Disaster Recovery and IT resiliency needs while offering the flexibility necessary to scale for future requirements, supporting multiple legacy healthcare platforms, such as physical and AIX-based solutions as well as multi-cloud hybrid deployments. With help from Opti9, SUNY Downstate Medical Center plans to implement additional IT resilience and private cloud solutions in a phased approach to further enhance its digital transformation strategy.
Service Provided
Disaster Recovery & IT Resilience
Client HQ
Brooklyn, New York
About the Client
The SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University is a public medical school in New York City and one of the three components of SUNY Downstate Medical Center: University Hospital at Long Island College Hospital, SUNY Downstate at Bay Ridge, and University Hospital of Brooklyn in East Flatbush. The College of Medicine is one of the seven medical schools located in New York City and the sole medical school in the borough of Brooklyn, serving its 2.5 million residents.