The Innlandet Hospital Trust is running a complex IT project where all hospitals in the region of Hedmark and Oppland in Norway, are merged. Eight self-contained hospitals and a large number of health institutions have now become one unit.

The new hospital consists of 44 geographical dispersed locations with about 30 miles from the one end to the other. This reorganization triggered a great need for communication and IT services. The IT Staff is also in a change mode where all maintenance is centralized at the city of Gjøvik. The deployment of Multiframe is central in this context.

Digital X-Rays

The project has three main parts.

• The first one is storing all pasient information into one consistent database.
• The second part is digitizing the X-Ray divisions so that all units can fetch their X-Rays directly over the network and get them displayed on any suitable screen. All X-Rays will be centralized in one database so that anyone with access rights can collect any X-Ray whenever they need it. The advantage of this scenario is that any X-Ray, produced in any place, will be available anywhere, so that experts can study them from any place in the hospital environment.
• The third part of the project deals with the development of the existing platform.

"We have taken some strategic decisions that include the use of thin clients. This is the part of the project where MultiFrame fits perfectly in. The point is to lower the administrative costs per user and lower the maintenance costs on the clients" says Riis.

Saving money

The Innlandet Hospital Trust has in a short period installed about 600 Multiframe thin clients. All in all they have around 4,000 PCs. They will, however, not run Multiframe on all of them. When the project is finished in the first stage, Mr. Riis will have Multiframe running on about 1,000 computers.

- We have not yet done comprehensive calculations on how much we will save by investing in Multiframe, but we will lower TCO per workstation significantly. So in the long run we will have very good return on our investment. Our goal is that the Innlandet Hospital shall be one of the best in the country. If this shall come true, we have to be best on IT and we must have fast and secure communication between all of our locations.

Customer-driven development

Multiframe is developed on the basis of the customers needs. The Community of Sarpsborg was the pilot customer and has been running the product with 100% stability since November 2002.

They are using MultiFrame in a multitude of their user segments with very good results. PCs, upto seven years old, have been deployed as Multiframe thin clients. The result is a significant cost saving both on the investment side and in maintenance costs – and with the additional benefits of performance boost and improved availability to the central data resources. The total cost savings have been calculated to about 4 million NOK (approx. 500,000 Euros) - a year.

It was last year that the Innlandet Hospital Trust got interested in Multiframe. They needed, however, to get the system customized for their special purposes. These features were directly implemented in the new version of the software.

- The new version that now is implemented is radically improved thanks to the close co-operation between vendor and customer. It is clearly an advantage that the customers have the power of influence in the development process. It would not be possible for us to put the right functionality into the Multiframe 2.0, without this input, says Pål Kongsness, Managing Director, Thin Client Solutions, Europa Telecom Group.

Multiframe has a great potential internationally. In March 2005, Multiframe got a lot of attention when it was launched at CeBIT by the Europa Telecom Group.

(Article from Umoe IKT's IKT-nytt publication, 2005. Photo: Morten Golimo)