Monitor both your healthcare
and classic IT infrastructure with PRTG
Modern hospitals are highly digitalized. Availability of patient data is at the core of this digitalization.
Classic IT systems and healthcare IT must work together seamlessly and need centralized monitoring.
PRTG keeps monitoring simple, while ensuring performance, clarity and ease of use.
Create innovative solutions with Paessler’s IT partners
Partnering with innovative IT vendors, Paessler unleashes synergies to create
new and additional benefits for joined customers.
With the combination of PRTG and Insys, the monitoring specialist Paessler and the industrial gateway manufacturer INSYS icom offer a practical possibility to merge IT and OT.
INSYS icom
Modern hospitals are highly digitalized
15 years ago, patients were shown a hardcopy of their X-Ray images, while today, images are sent directly to monitors on the wall, or to the physician’s tablet. In most cases, doctors want fast access to patient data.
This could be X-Ray, MRT or ultrasound images, laboratory or specialist results, the patient’s history, or details of the patient’s primary care physician. All this data is transported via the hospital’s system infrastructure:
- HIS (Hospital Information System) – master data
- LIMS (Laboratory Information System) – laboratory data
- RIS (Radiology Information System – radiology data
Images generated from devices like X-Ray, MRT, ultrasound or video endoscopies are stored on the PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System).
Nowadays most hospitals have a central communication server connecting these systems together, so the doctor has access to all relevant patient information at any time.
Identify the right monitoring solution
Of course, also a monitoring solution for your classic and healthcare IT systems must comply with all standard requirements like:
Feature set, usability, price performance ratio, licensing, implementation efforts, technical support.
Additionally, in this case you should also turn attention on the following aspects:
Classic IT infrastructure
All medical devices require a classic IT infrastructure for communication. This infrastructure looks after the data transfer and provides the hardware for the system network. Cables, switches, servers and storage systems are required, as well as WIFI and its access points.
Comprehensive IT monitoring
Only when classic IT can guarantee performance and security does it fulfill its purpose. The foundation of these medical devices and systems requires comprehensive IT monitoring. Availability of devices, data transfer and application performance must be kept under continuous observation. IT monitoring, or network monitoring, is not new. There are numerous solutions available. However, many solutions do not offer the possibility to integrate medical devices into the monitoring concept.
Data security
Security plays an important role. Hospital IT is no longer isolated; it is entwined with various institutions (health insurance companies, doctors, building technology, administration, etc.), placing extremely high expectations on firewalls, virus scanners and intrusion detection systems.
This is how PRTG keeps track of healthcare IT
Monitor medical equipment and classic IT together in PRTG
With PRTG Network Monitor Paessler offers a centralized monitoring solution
that is a perfect fit for monitoring medical equipment and IT
Customized dashboards
With PRTG you create maps in HTML format within minutes via drag & drop. PRTG brings two worlds together in one view: Classic IT and medical IT. Users can create customized dashboards with Drag & Drop to visualize all technology components in the hospital. The dashboard can be built to display malfunctions, interferences or outages as soon as they occur, and configured to inform, or alert, the responsible parties.
Monitor multiple Sites
Many hospitals have different sites. Using the free PRTG remote probes feature is a lean and easy way to monitor multiple sites with one installation/license of PRTG. Another flexible feature in PRTG is the REST Custom Sensor. It enables the administrator to easily integrate all devices offering a REST API into PRTG. That could be refrigerators, sensors for monitoring temperature, air quality or humidity, as well as systems for premises security.
RESTful API
With the PRTG REST Custom sensors, it is possible to connect to communication servers (like Orchestra made by Soffico) via RESTful API. Using DICOM, image data, X-Ray devices, MRTs, Ultrasound and video endoscopies can be pulled into the monitoring overview. HL7 is the most common protocol used to transfer patient data, and with PRTG’s native HL7 feature, systems like HIS, RIS and LIMS can also be pulled into the central
monitoring view.
PRTG alert system
The setup and functionality of data transmission, storage, analysis, and publishing in medical technology is the same as the classic IT network. PRTG users can define thresholds to warn them before an outage occurs. They decide how to receive such alerts: Via email, SMS, push notification, or otherwise. The notification feature provides huge value for those on call – they will immediately see where the issue lies, and if the issue has been acknowledged by the responsible party.
Healthcare sensors & data security
Within PRTG, the REST Custom Sensor and data protocols, DICOM and HL7, were extended to make centralized monitoring for the health sector even easier. Here you will find an overview of all PRTG eHealth sensors.
Patient data is managed and transferred via HL7. PRTG uses HL7 to ensure data is transferred securely and to monitor the machines involved. PRTG has no access to personal data. Only data type, volume, pathway and device state are monitored.
“By implementing PRTG, we are now able to deliver a more reliable service for the hospital to ensure that medical staff are able to deliver frontline care.”
Mike Isaac, Network and Systems Manager at NHS Musgrove Park Hospital.
Unlimited version of PRTG for 30 days. After 30 days, PRTG reverts to a free version.
Or, you can upgrade to a paid license anytime.
Would you like to explore more about healthcare IT monitoring?
Then, you must check out our inspirational tutorials and webinars.
Get more deep-dive information here!
Healthcare IT – a monitoring primer
This paper introduces best practices to ensure a complete and reliable monitoring solution specifically for healthcare IT infrastructure.
Monitor your healthcare IT the easy way – Webinar
Join our webinar and discover how to optimise your IT infrastructure, and support the doctors and patients they serve.
Learn how to monitor healthcare IT with PRTG – tutorial videos
In this blog post, we share some tutorial videos that show you exactly how to set the healthcare IT sensors up in PRTG, and the information that they deliver to you.
“For more than 10 years now, we have been using PRTG Network Monitor to monitor our ever-increasing number of systems. We proactively receive information about incidents, errors or restrictions of certain services to be able to react faster and more targeted.
In many cases, this helps us to prevent a failure or to identify the cause more quickly. The flexibility and the available healthcare-specific sensors of PRTG are ideal here, as we use a large number of different systems, especially in the hospital environment, and can monitor them closely and thus operate them more trouble-free.”
Björn Bechtold, Director IT & zPM, Head of department IT – Infrastructure at Schwarzwald-Baar Klinikum Villingen-Schwenningen GmbH
Unlimited version of PRTG for 30 days. After 30 days, PRTG reverts to a free version.
Or, you can upgrade to a paid license anytime.