Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Customer Solution Case Study
Seychelles Unites Three Main Islands into
Single IT Infrastructure in Just Four Years
Overview
Country or Region: Seychelles
Industry: Healthcare/Government
Customer Profile
The Ministry of Health and Social Services,
Republic of Seychelles, provides primary,
secondary, and tertiary healthcare services
to 81,000 people living on islands in the
Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa.
Business Situation
The Ministry’s Health Department wanted
to invest in an automated health
information system for a diversified
healthcare service responsible for 115
islands, but first needed to create an IT
infrastructure from scratch.
Solution
The department chose Microsoft® Windows
Server™ 2003 as the operating system,
with the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
communication and collaboration server.
Benefits
 Automated infrastructure saves lives
 Training support for the entire health
service
 Enhanced management of medical
supplies
 Foundation for electronic patient records
system
 Linking remote sites promotes social
inclusion
“The Microsoft environment deployed at the Health
Department has the potential to further increase our
efficiency in administering healthcare processes.”
Benjamin Choppy, Permanent Secretary of IT, Republic of Seychelles
In 2001 the Republic of Seychelles found that it needed an
automated electronic patient records system for its 81,000 citizens
who live on 115 islands. At that time, the Ministry of Health and
Social Services lacked IT skills and equipment, and used mostly
paper-based systems. First, the government gained funding from
the World Health Organisation. It then worked with Microsoft to
create an information and communications technology
infrastructure based on Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 and
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. The Ministry is now ready to
choose a partner to implement an electronic patient record system.
The new system will save patients’ lives because doctors will be
able to send medical data to remote locations in seconds rather
than days. Also, all business decision making within the health
department will be integrated in one IT infrastructure, resulting in
reduced costs.
Situation
“Imagine how difficult it
was when under the old
paper-based system,
patient records could
take three days to be
referred back from the
main hospital to a
district clinic.”
Maurice Lousteau-Lalanne, former Chief
Executive Officer at the Ministry of Health and
Social Services
The Ministry of Health and Social Services in
the Republic of Seychelles provides primary,
secondary, and tertiary healthcare services to
81,000 people. They live in an Indian Ocean
archipelago of 115 islands north-east of
Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. The
ministry’s Health Department is highly
decentralised. It employs around 2000
people who provide high-quality healthcare in
a geographically challenging environment.
The main referral hospital is on the largest
island of Mahé, with specialised surgical,
diagnostic, and clinical care, while 16 health
centre’s offer primary healthcare at the heart
of the community on Mahé and three other
islands.
Given the scale of the business challenge
and the dispersed health centres, the
Republic's Health Department sought to
invest in an efficient automated health
information system. Officials were convinced
that doctors and nurses should electronically
access timely and accurate information,
including radiology services and laboratory
test results between the various Health
Department facilities.
Maurice Lousteau-Lalanne, former Chief
Executive Officer at the Ministry of Health and
Social Services, explains, “Imagine how
difficult it was when under the old paperbased system, patient records could take
three days to be referred back from the main
hospital to a district clinic. Also, with patient
mobility throughout the country, a patient
could have 10 or more different sets of
records.”
Starting in 2001, the Health Department’s IT
team drew up a strategy to render
communication between different services
much more effective and efficient. The plan
encompassed seven principal targets:
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

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A secure network for the entire Ministry
with an intranet, local area network (LAN)
and wide area network (WAN).
An automated, centralised health
information system.
Interactive Web site for the Department of
Health.
Staff training on technology, since most
doctors and nurses had few IT skills.
Development of an IT policy.
Use of telecommunications technology for
medical diagnosis and patient care
(referred to as "telemedicine") when the
provider and client are separated by
distance.
As a first step, the World Health Organisation
(WHO) funded the creation of a centralised
fiber-optic backbone network for the Health
Department based at Victoria Hospital in
Mahé, connecting seven principal buildings.
Dr Rui Gama Vaz, former WHO Liaison Officer,
Republic of Seychelles, comments, “In the
past five years, the WHO Liaison Office in
Seychelles has played a crucial role in
promoting and facilitating the acquisition of IT
to improve healthcare in the country. WHO
funded a computer network for the Ministry
of Health headquarters. This grant has paid
for the setting up of an intranet at the Health
Department's central level.”
Solution
The department chose the Microsoft®
Windows Server™ 2003 operating system,
part of Microsoft Windows Server System™
integrated server software, with Active
Directory® service. It runs on two Dell™
PowerEdge 4600 series servers. The outlying
health centres submit data by integrated
services digital network (ISDN) links to a
central data store.
Lanka Dorby, Director of Health Information,
Ministry of Health, Republic of Seychelles,
was the first person recruited to work on the
project. The section now employs a secretary
and four technical staff. She says, “The main
factors influencing the choice of Windows
Server 2003 for the operating system were
security, which gives us peace of mind, plus
system reliability and availability with no
downtime. Windows Server 2003 also offers
scalability to meet our future needs.”
“The main factors
influencing the choice of
“The
Seychelles
Windows
Server Health
2003
Department’s
IT
for the operating system
infrastructure
were security, is
which
exemplary
to
the
gives us peace ofWhole
mind,
of
WHO
member
states”.
plus system reliability
Dr Cornelia Atsyor, New WHO Liaison Officer,
and
availability with no
Republic of Seychelles
downtime."
Lanka Dorby, Director of Health Information,
Ministry of Health, Republic of Seychelles
For messaging requirements, the department
picked the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
communication and collaboration server and
the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003
messaging and collaboration client for the
Health Department's workstations. Microsoft
Services technical consultant Clarel
Constance configured Exchange Server 2003
and also trained in-house staff to use
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration
(ISA) Server 2004 for the firewall. Microsoft
helped support the project through its
business investment fund and is now in talks
with the Seychelles government about a
Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.
For its workstations, the ministry is using the
Microsoft Windows® XP operating system and
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.
Constance advises, “The ministry’s IT team
agreed with us that it was important to
standardise the technology rather than roll
out different versions of Microsoft Windows.
The in-house IT team's expertise has grown,
and they have adopted Windows Server 2003
Group Policy and managed the
implementation of ISA Server 2004 itself.”
The Health Department has gone live with a
hosted Web site. Dorby says: “Starting next
year, we plan to implement a feature called
Online Doctor that will help patients to
contact doctors through our Web site.”
The Health Department's main headquarters
have been operating efficiently now for nearly
three years. Since March 2003 all of the
health centres are linked to the
headquarters, with help from Cable and
Wireless, a leading telecommunications
operator in the Seychelles. This makes the
Health Department one of the biggest wide
area networks in the Seychelles.
Benefits
Fully Automated Health Systems
Infrastructure Saves Lives
In 2001, the Seychelles had no IT
infrastructure for its healthcare service. The
geographical challenge was immense, with
16 health centres, three of which are on two
outlying islands.
But with the new information and
communications technology (ICT)
infrastructure, Lousteau-Lalanne says
medical practitioners have a much more
powerful tool for life-saving early intervention
in patient care. “Lives are already being
saved because doctors can send medical and
diagnostic data to remote locations in
seconds rather than days.
“With hindsight, we should have done it 10
years ago,” he notes. “But the paradigm shift
has now taken place, and with the help of
Microsoft, we’re ready to move forward to the
next phase.”
With the appropriate infrastructure design to
match the complicated topography of the
Seychelles, and thanks to its dedicated staff,
the Health Department has won international
recognition. In 2004, it won the African ICT
Achievers Awards Top Government
Department Award.
Dr Cornelia Atsyor, New WHO Liaison Officer,
Republic of Seychelles says, “The Seychelles
Health Department’s IT infrastructure is
exemplary to the Whole of WHO member
states.”
Dorby adds, “All our achievements happened
in just four years, thanks to three principal
“We have experienced a
revolution in working
practices and a major
change in culture.
Microsoft helped us in
many ways: Our
department is now seen
as a model by the rest of
the government for IT
development."
Lanka Dorby, Director of Health Information,
Ministry of Health, Republic of Seychelles
partners working together: the Department of
Health, which created and built an IT
operation, WHO, for the funding, and
Microsoft, for technical assistance and
software.”
the rest of the e-government systems,” says
Choppy. “We want to promote integration
within the overall national system, which can
permit the full electronic transaction of any
government e-service process.”
Foundation for Introducing Electronic Patient
Records System
Thanks to Microsoft and the Department of
Health IT unit, the ministry can now move to
the implementation of an electronic patient
records system. Benjamin Choppy,
Permanent Secretary of IT, who reports to
Seychelles Vice President Joseph Belmont,
explains, “This will happen soon now, after
the Ministry has settled on a software
package for electronic storage of patient
records. It will be used by healthcare
practitioners and managers.
Cost-Effective Technology Links Remote Sites
Microsoft technology helped the Health
Department to link its remote sites and to
offer universal health services to a dispersed
population. The new IT infrastructure provides
a sound environment for future projects, such
as telemedicine and a centralised health
information system.
“All patient details will be incorporated and
linked to other medically-relevant
information. This integrated set of medical
information, including lab test results, X-rays,
and computed axial tomography (CAT) scans,
must be made available throughout the
health system. To promote social inclusion,
this system will serve the main hospital and a
health centre on one of the outer islands.
Sub-sets of the information will no doubt be
useful to agencies outside this immediate
ministry.”
Choppy adds, “The capture and storage of
medical information in electronic formats will
also allow their transfer and exchange
between medical institutions (local and
overseas) to be more efficient, and therefore,
make telemedicine possible for the
Seychelles. The government hopes this will
result in more patients being treated in the
Seychelles and result in a reduced need to
send patients overseas for specialised
treatment.
“The central repository of medical information
must be customised to be compatible with
Dr Vaz says: “The current network has helped
different divisions, departments, and units
within the ministry to share up-to-date
information. It has increased the feedback of
the weekly epidemiological data from the
central to the primary healthcare levels,
where data is generated. It has been proven
as an effective clinical and management
tool.”
Improving Stock Controls and Making
Management More Agile
With around 320 users, all decision making
within the health department is integrated in
one IT infrastructure, down to middle
management level.
Lousteau-Lalanne explains, "In addition to the
clinical benefits, administration and basic
housekeeping have been made more
efficient and less time consuming. For
example, in stock controls, we’ve updated our
business processes. Managing medical
consumables is a major challenge, but with
automation, we can avoid holding too much
or too little stock and thus improve our
business agility.”
Choppy adds, "The Microsoft environment
deployed at the Health Department has the
potential to further increase efficiency in
administering healthcare processes. More
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Ministry of
Health and Social Services products and
services, visit the Web site at:
www.moh.gov.sc
importantly, perhaps, is that a health
information system for the whole population
can be deployed using Microsoft technology.”
IT Training Support for Entire Health Service
Microsoft has been a major force in the
Seychelles healthcare IT program by helping
with the training of locally-based IT staff. “We
started with the IT basics,” recalls Dorby.
“Five years ago many of the around 2000
ministry staff members were not IT literate.
Some of them were wedded to paper systems
and a few could not immediately see the
need for PCs in their everyday work.”
Windows Server 2003
The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family
helps organizations do more with less. Now
you can: Run your IT infrastructure more
efficiently; Build better applications faster;
Deliver the best infrastructure for enhancing
user productivity. And you can do all this
faster, more securely, and at lower cost.
For more information about Windows Server
2003, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003
With help from Microsoft, Dorby’s team built
up their own knowledge and then delivered IT
training to some 300 users who are now
making full use of online communications
and collaboration technology.
Dorby says: “We have experienced a
revolution in working practices and a major
change in culture. Microsoft helped us in
many ways: Our department is now seen as a
model by the rest of the government for IT
development.
“Furthermore, our doctors and nurses are
now evangelists for the IT system. It saves
them time on administration and record
keeping. Most of the staff are now able to
receive up-to-date statistics on a daily,
weekly, and monthly basis, which is vital for
all health professionals and decision
makers.”
Software and Services
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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Active Directory, Outlook, Windows, the Windows
logo, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either
registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in
the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks
are property of their respective owners.
Document published March 2006
Products
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
− Microsoft Internet Security and
Acceleration Server 2004
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000
− Microsoft Windows Server 2003
− Microsoft Windows XP Professional
− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003