THUNDER BAY – Just as important as all of the lifesaving equipment at the regional hospital is the technological infrastructure that allows it to operate.
Dawn Bubar, the senior director of informatics for the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Care Group, said the more than 500 servers are connected to nearly every piece of equipment used in the hospital.
“It’s the backbone. If we were to lose our data centre, our operations would pretty much come to a grinding halt,” Bubar said.
“Everything is dependent on running off a computer system these days. Everything, right from not only your computer and your usual financial applications, but also all of our clinical equipment is dependent, access to digital health records, our lab equipment.”
To increase reliability, back up measures and security, a new regional data centre will be created in Thunder Bay. The province on Friday announced $1 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation will go towards the project, a partnership between the regional hospital and St. Joseph’s Care Group.
The hospital will eventually transfer its existing data centre to the new facility, a 4,500 square foot space located within the Health Services Centre building on Oliver Road
The new data will provide enhanced access to records and allow for sharing between facilities across Northwestern Ontario.
“By allowing us to be on a shared system and us hosting it here, it allows for the seamless movement of information, timely access for clinicians to their health record, timely access for the patient for information,” Bubar said.
“We’re moving more and more to regional health systems so we can support our patients and families in a more timely manner.”
MPP Bill Mauro (Lib., Thunder Bay-Atikokan) made the announcement and said the data centre is important for providing the capacity to connect hospitals across the region to each other, as well as the rest of Ontario.
“The ability to share data amongst Northwestern Ontario, as well as interfaced with hospitals in other parts of the province in other regions is important to health outcomes, to efficiencies, to cost savings for patients,” Mauro said.
Mauro acknowledged security and privacy are two significant concerns for many patients when it comes to digitizing health records.
Bubar said there are many aspects where electronic records have increased security.
“Digital health records allow us to track all the access to health records,” Bubar said. “We know who opened the record and when, what time, what they looked at. By having the ability to store these systems we’re able to then monitor the access to health records and ensure only appropriate access is being done.”
Construction is expected to be completed in the late fall with the new centre expected to be completely operational in about 18 months.
