Improving Patient Care With Edge Solutions

As Mercy Ships – the world’s largest civilian hospital ship providing state-of-the-art free care to underdeveloped areas – continues to grow it needed technology that could keep pace with the current and future digital landscape.  

Dell Technologies’ edge computing solutions allow Mercy Ships to be and grow more efficiently, Dave Shwadlenak, the vice president of information services for Mercy Ships, said in a customer testimonial.

“Whether it’s in the realm of technology that we already have on board and improving that technology, or whether it’s bringing in new technology we have never had onboard; [it] translates to better patient care,” Shwadlenak said.

One of the values in working within edge solutions is the ability to have necessary data where it is needed most; in the hands of the doctors, nurses, and surgeons that provide life-changing procedures. It has also allowed Mercy Ships to decipher where a patient will be located, who is on board, and who will be leaving the ship.

That is what edge solutions are all about for us, being able to move data around and using it at the source close to compute, “but also push it wherever we may need it to act upon it and to use it differently,” Shwadlenak explained.

In addition, Mercy Ships can utilize Dell Technologies’ edge solutions to modernize and make more efficient their procurement process more. Before onboarding Dell Technologies’ edge solutions, Mercy Ships’ procurement process was a paper approach and things were done manually.

“Now we can bring applications aboard at point of use through the edge,” Shwadlenak said.

“We’re able to not only provide better systems but also its allowed us to scale the environment on board and build more and better applications,” said Jonathan Dyson, the director for enterprise infrastructure for Mercy Ships.

Mercy Ships has also utilized Dell Technologies VxRail solutions – a hyper-convergence application – to allow medical personnel onboard to have immediate access to data while keeping it secure.

“It allows us that immediacy of data and also allows us to secure patient data ensuring that it remains secure and doesn’t go outside the bounds of the ships,” Shwadlenak said.

Mercy Ships, he explained, was in search of solutions that would ensure that they kept pace with where their current digital environment was but ensured that they would be prepared for future developments.

“Dell Technologies provides us with the assurance that they’re going to be there both now and in the future for us,” Shwadlenak concluded.