Case Study
Migration of a Clinical Information System
Memorial Hermann
“By doing this important
migration, we have gained
back significant capacity on
our database. We were able
to optimize the database
in the process, almost
like ‘de-fragmentation’
which improves overall
transaction times. The ‘trash
compactor’ process left us
with a smaller, more efficient
database. GoldenGate made
the migration process so
seamless and easy, we are
considering the use of this
solution in the future to
regain storage space
and improve speed
and efficiency.”
– Amanda Hammel,
Systems Executive for
Technical Services,
Memorial Hermann
Healthcare System
Systems Summary
<Hardware/OS:
OpenVMS, HP-UX
<Software:
GoldenGate
<Databases:
Oracle 9i & 10g
<Applications:
Millennium
Cerner
In late 1997, the hospitals formerly known as
Memorial Healthcare System and Hermann
Healthcare System completed their merger,
becoming the largest not-for-profit healthcare
system in the nation. Today, Memorial Hermann is
an integrated health system known for world-class
clinical expertise, patient-centered care, leading
edge technology, and innovation. Memorial
Hermann serves the greater Houston, Texas
community through 11 hospitals and many
specialty programs and services, including three
premier Heart & Vascular Institutes, TIRR|Memorial
Hermann, Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital,
a Sports Medicine Institute, the Mischer
Neuroscience Institute, seven comprehensive
Cancer Centers, 27 sports medicine and
rehabilitation centers, a substance abuse
treatment center and dozens of other specialty and
outpatient centers. Memorial Hermann operates
one of two level 1 trauma centers in Houston and
provides the Life Flight air ambulance program, as
well as the city’s only burn treatment center.
When the merger took place in 1997, Memorial
Healthcare System and Hermann Healthcare
System were operating completely independently of
one another. It was not until 2001 that the
healthcare organization decided to standardize
on Cerner’s Healthcare Information Technology
Systems and roll out its suite of solutions to all of
the healthcare facilities.
Based on technology changes and application
requirements, plans were made to migrate the
Cerner Millennium® application from OpenVMS to
a new platform. While Memorial Hermann originally
recognized the need for the migration in 2006,
the IT team took a few years to decide the best
approach before beginning the migration in the
summer of 2008. During this time, Memorial
Hermann turned to its partner Cerner for
recommendations and best practices for
migrating its system off OpenVMS. Being a
2800 Rockcreek Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64117
<Provided
a seamless and easy
migration with minimal impact to
clinical users
<Primary
database went from 8TB prior
to the migration to 4.5TB after the
migration
<Users
The Challenge
Cerner Corporation
Project Highlights
within the healthcare network
were back up and running 23 minutes
ahead of schedule
hardware agnostic vendor, Cerner helped
Memorial Hermann complete a thorough ROI
analysis on the different platform options. While
most of the platforms tested came out about equal
in terms of technical requirements, Memorial
Hermann chose HP-UX as the new platform based
on the ROI.
Once the new hardware platform had been
decided, Memorial Hermann once again turned to
Cerner for guidance on how to migrate its
Millennium system from OpenVMS to HP-UX without
taking a major outage and interrupting patient care
throughout all of its healthcare facilities. In August
of 2008, Cerner’s Systems Integration group, which
provides a complete continuum of technology
866.221.8877
www.cerner.com
solutions and services for its clients’ healthcare
environments, recommended its trusted partner,
GoldenGate Software to complete the migration
from OpenVMS running Oracle 9i to HP-UX running
Oracle 10g.
“Having been a longtime Cerner client, we look to
them to help us devise the best plan and help us
select the most appropriate solutions for the task
at hand,” said Amanda Hammel, Systems
Executive for Technical Services at Memorial
Hermann Healthcare System. “Cerner worked with
GoldenGate to provide the best solution for
migrating the database with minimal impact to
clinical users.”
gain back capacity on our database. We were able
to optimize the database in the process, almost
like ‘de-fragmentation’ which allowed us to improve
overall transaction times. The ‘trash compactor’
process left us with a smaller, more efficient
database. GoldenGate made the migration so
seamless and easy, we are considering the use of
this solution in the future to regain storage space
and improve speed and efficiency.”
In the end, Memorial Hermann’s primary database
went from 8TB prior to the migration to 4.5TB
after the migration, which equates to the hospital
only using about 60% of available space today —
allowing plenty of growth capacity.
The Solution
The Conclusion
Once Memorial Hermann Healthcare System’s
IT team decided on GoldenGate as its migration
solution, the organization quickly got to work
deploying it in late 2008. Memorial Hermann
implemented GoldenGate to capture transactional
data from its Cerner Millennium clinical
information system running on an Oracle 9i
database and OpenVMS hardware and delivering
to the new target environment running on Oracle
10g and HP-UX.
Moving forward, Memorial Hermann is looking to
expand its use of both Cerner and GoldenGate
solutions. The healthcare system is evaluating the
use of the GoldenGate live standby solution for high
availability of its Cerner Millennium application and
even further down the road, the live reporting
solution for Cerner’s PowerInsight® solution,
allowing users to run reports, queries and analytics
in real-time without impacting the production
system.
Memorial Hermann’s IT team did a significant
amount of planning in preparation for the migration
to ensure the project went smoothly and as
planned. The team also turned on its homegrown
Downtime Clinical Access (DTCA) system during
the outage. The DTCA system extracts data out of
the Cerner Millennium application for read-only
historical reference every two hours. The hospital
staff also resorted to printed copies for rounds
reports to use for reference until the Cerner
Millennium application was back online.
“At Memorial Hermann, it has always been our goal
to partner with industry leading solution providers
that enable us to provide our patients with the
very best quality of care,” stated Hammel. “It is
experiences like this that show us how vital our
partner technologies have been in helping us live
up to the exceptional standards our healthcare
network has come to operate by.”
Originally allowing for an outage of three hours and
15 minutes to complete the migration, Memorial
Hermann’s staff was pleasantly surprised by how
quickly the migration was completed. In fact, the
process went so smoothly that the testers in the
Information Systems department had to be alerted
to begin verifying that all data had been moved
to the new environment earlier than planned. In
the end, users within the healthcare network were
back up and running 23 minutes early. In a large
hospital network, every minute counts and helps
reduce overall risk.
About GoldenGate Software
GoldenGate Software Inc. is a leading provider of high
availability and real-time data integration solutions for
improving the availability, accessibility and performance
of critical data across heterogeneous enterprise IT
environments. More than 500 enterprises use the
GoldenGate® solutions worldwide, including Visa, Bank
of America, US Bank, UBS, Sabre Holdings, DIRECTV,
Comcast, Federated Investors, Mayo Foundation and
Overstock.com, to standardize on the GoldenGate
solutions for real-time access to real-time information.
The company broadens its global market reach through
relationships with ACI Worldwide, Amdocs, Cerner, GE
Healthcare, HP, IBM, Ingres, Teradata Corporation and
others. GoldenGate is an Oracle Certified Partner and a
Microsoft Certified Partner. For more information, visit
www.goldengate.com.
In addition to the benefits of the seamless
migration, Memorial Hermann also saw an
immediate return on their investment. According to
Hammel, “performing the migration allowed us to
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Cerner Corporation
2800 Rockcreek Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64117
866.221.8877
www.cerner.com