How Zscaler Helps Healthcare IT Infrastructure Teams Sleep at Night Paul Sullivan

You are part of the infrastructure networking team at a large healthcare provider. It’s 6 a.m. and you are laying down to attempt to get some sleep after you and your team just completed a major infrastructure upgrade that started at 11 p.m. and ran until 5 a.m. (because that’s when change windows happen in healthcare). The change involved a complex migration of the core network infrastructure connecting the entire hospital IT environment – medcarts, Wi-Fi, glucometers, VoIP, Vocera, Imprivata workstations – i.e., all clinical operations with IT dependencies from check-in to discharge are reliant upon this critical part of the infrastructure you just completed open heart surgery on.

The IT application team members join the testing bridge at 5 a.m., nearly as bleary-eyed as you, but without the in-depth understanding of what just happened over the last six hours. All the application testers finish their testing as planned (a point-in-time spot check) to the best of their ability (since they don’t REALLY know what changed, what they are testing for, and just want to get ready to do their own jobs in three hours) and all tests come out GREEN or validated. The call wraps and you can try to rest your weary eyes.

Until …… your phone rings…. it’s your manager……. application X that tested fine (or wasn’t tested at all since it wasn’t expected to have issues) is having problems. The clinical night shift on the nursing floor didn’t report the issue to IT until the end of their shift because they were (rightly) doing their jobs – taking care of patients. The next eight hours involve patient and employee dissatisfaction because the workflow is interrupted, multiple tech support calls, escalations, until it’s finally resolved and everyone can get back to work as usual, until the next time IT decides to do an “upgrade.” We’ve all been patients and it’s likely we have been impacted by said “IT problem.”

What if prior to the next major scheduled upgrade, all the workstations throughout the entire hospital were periodically checking their most critical application’s performance (an on-premises application, an internet application, and an application hosted in private cloud) both before, and after the change. Hundreds or thousands of unique views of application’s performance from the clinic, hospital, and home users near and far are graphed and centralized into a dashboard to give the IT teams confidence the change they just completed ACTUALLY is working as expected. Not a point-in-time check in the wee hours of the morning.

Enter Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX). With ZDX, powered by the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, unexpected IT issues after a planned infrastructure change could become a thing of the past, improving the IT service and helping leading healthcare providers deliver the safe and quality care their patients expect and deserve.

Using a multitude of metrics from the end user’s computer (CPU, memory, disk) through the network (like DNS and HTTP response times, packet loss, jitter, etc.) toward the defined application, ZDX computes a score equating to “poor,” “okay,” or “good.”

A snapshot of a user’s application performance over time with the option to utilize the AI/ML feature “Analyze Score”

And since a single computer doing a spot in time check is not sufficient to confidently identify issues, the Zscaler Digital Experience provides a holistic vantage point from all locations.

ZDX is a user experience monitoring and improvement platform, and proactive problem resolution is a key benefit since we know administrators and service desk teams are not staring into a system waiting for a problem to occur. With Zscaler’s alerting capabilities and integration with third-party service management tools like ServiceNow, team members can create alerting criteria relevant to the impending change and be proactively alerted if criteria is met. Here are a few examples:

Finally, with the most recent Zscaler + Imprivata integration, a holistic vision of application performance pre- and post-change is a reality for all devices running Zscaler Client Connector, including Imprivata workstations (which, for many healthcare providers, represent a significant percentage of workstations critical for patient care).

In conclusion, by leveraging ZDX, healthcare providers can proactively address potential issues and ensure a seamless transition during infrastructure upgrades. The comprehensive monitoring and alerting capabilities of ZDX, combined with its integration with Imprivata and other service management tools, enable healthcare organizations to deliver the safe and quality care that patients expect and deserve. With ZDX, unexpected IT problems can become a thing of the past, allowing healthcare providers to focus on their primary goal of providing excellent patient care.

Visit our healthcare page for more information about how Zscaler is working with healthcare organizations to secure, simplify and transform with zero trust.

We’d also love to show you the benefits of ZDX firsthand! Schedule a custom demo here.  

​

You are part of the infrastructure networking team at a large healthcare provider. It’s 6 a.m. and you are laying down to attempt to get some sleep after you and your team just completed a major infrastructure upgrade that started at 11 p.m. and ran until 5 a.m. (because that’s when change windows happen in healthcare). The change involved a complex migration of the core network infrastructure connecting the entire hospital IT environment – medcarts, Wi-Fi, glucometers, VoIP, Vocera, Imprivata workstations – i.e., all clinical operations with IT dependencies from check-in to discharge are reliant upon this critical part of the infrastructure you just completed open heart surgery on.

The IT application team members join the testing bridge at 5 a.m., nearly as bleary-eyed as you, but without the in-depth understanding of what just happened over the last six hours. All the application testers finish their testing as planned (a point-in-time spot check) to the best of their ability (since they don’t REALLY know what changed, what they are testing for, and just want to get ready to do their own jobs in three hours) and all tests come out GREEN or validated. The call wraps and you can try to rest your weary eyes.

Until …… your phone rings…. it’s your manager……. application X that tested fine (or wasn’t tested at all since it wasn’t expected to have issues) is having problems. The clinical night shift on the nursing floor didn’t report the issue to IT until the end of their shift because they were (rightly) doing their jobs – taking care of patients. The next eight hours involve patient and employee dissatisfaction because the workflow is interrupted, multiple tech support calls, escalations, until it’s finally resolved and everyone can get back to work as usual, until the next time IT decides to do an “upgrade.” We’ve all been patients and it’s likely we have been impacted by said “IT problem.”

What if prior to the next major scheduled upgrade, all the workstations throughout the entire hospital were periodically checking their most critical application’s performance (an on-premises application, an internet application, and an application hosted in private cloud) both before, and after the change. Hundreds or thousands of unique views of application’s performance from the clinic, hospital, and home users near and far are graphed and centralized into a dashboard to give the IT teams confidence the change they just completed ACTUALLY is working as expected. Not a point-in-time check in the wee hours of the morning.

Enter Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX). With ZDX, powered by the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, unexpected IT issues after a planned infrastructure change could become a thing of the past, improving the IT service and helping leading healthcare providers deliver the safe and quality care their patients expect and deserve.

Using a multitude of metrics from the end user’s computer (CPU, memory, disk) through the network (like DNS and HTTP response times, packet loss, jitter, etc.) toward the defined application, ZDX computes a score equating to “poor,” “okay,” or “good.”

A snapshot of a user’s application performance over time with the option to utilize the AI/ML feature “Analyze Score” 

And since a single computer doing a spot in time check is not sufficient to confidently identify issues, the Zscaler Digital Experience provides a holistic vantage point from all locations.

ZDX is a user experience monitoring and improvement platform, and proactive problem resolution is a key benefit since we know administrators and service desk teams are not staring into a system waiting for a problem to occur. With Zscaler’s alerting capabilities and integration with third-party service management tools like ServiceNow, team members can create alerting criteria relevant to the impending change and be proactively alerted if criteria is met. Here are a few examples:

Finally, with the most recent Zscaler + Imprivata integration, a holistic vision of application performance pre- and post-change is a reality for all devices running Zscaler Client Connector, including Imprivata workstations (which, for many healthcare providers, represent a significant percentage of workstations critical for patient care).

In conclusion, by leveraging ZDX, healthcare providers can proactively address potential issues and ensure a seamless transition during infrastructure upgrades. The comprehensive monitoring and alerting capabilities of ZDX, combined with its integration with Imprivata and other service management tools, enable healthcare organizations to deliver the safe and quality care that patients expect and deserve. With ZDX, unexpected IT problems can become a thing of the past, allowing healthcare providers to focus on their primary goal of providing excellent patient care.

Visit our healthcare page for more information about how Zscaler is working with healthcare organizations to secure, simplify and transform with zero trust.

We’d also love to show you the benefits of ZDX firsthand! Schedule a custom demo here.

 You are part of the infrastructure networking team at a large healthcare provider. It’s 6 a.m. and you are laying down to attempt to get some sleep after you and your team just completed a major infrastructure upgrade that started at 11 p.m. and ran until 5 a.m. (because that’s when change windows happen in healthcare). The change involved a complex migration of the core network infrastructure connecting the entire hospital IT environment – medcarts, Wi-Fi, glucometers, VoIP, Vocera, Imprivata workstations – i.e., all clinical operations with IT dependencies from check-in to discharge are reliant upon this critical part of the infrastructure you just completed open heart surgery on.

The IT application team members join the testing bridge at 5 a.m., nearly as bleary-eyed as you, but without the in-depth understanding of what just happened over the last six hours. All the application testers finish their testing as planned (a point-in-time spot check) to the best of their ability (since they don’t REALLY know what changed, what they are testing for, and just want to get ready to do their own jobs in three hours) and all tests come out GREEN or validated. The call wraps and you can try to rest your weary eyes.

Until …… your phone rings…. it’s your manager……. application X that tested fine (or wasn’t tested at all since it wasn’t expected to have issues) is having problems. The clinical night shift on the nursing floor didn’t report the issue to IT until the end of their shift because they were (rightly) doing their jobs – taking care of patients. The next eight hours involve patient and employee dissatisfaction because the workflow is interrupted, multiple tech support calls, escalations, until it’s finally resolved and everyone can get back to work as usual, until the next time IT decides to do an “upgrade.” We’ve all been patients and it’s likely we have been impacted by said “IT problem.”

What if prior to the next major scheduled upgrade, all the workstations throughout the entire hospital were periodically checking their most critical application’s performance (an on-premises application, an internet application, and an application hosted in private cloud) both before, and after the change. Hundreds or thousands of unique views of application’s performance from the clinic, hospital, and home users near and far are graphed and centralized into a dashboard to give the IT teams confidence the change they just completed ACTUALLY is working as expected. Not a point-in-time check in the wee hours of the morning.

Enter Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX). With ZDX, powered by the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, unexpected IT issues after a planned infrastructure change could become a thing of the past, improving the IT service and helping leading healthcare providers deliver the safe and quality care their patients expect and deserve.

Using a multitude of metrics from the end user’s computer (CPU, memory, disk) through the network (like DNS and HTTP response times, packet loss, jitter, etc.) toward the defined application, ZDX computes a score equating to “poor,” “okay,” or “good.”

A snapshot of a user’s application performance over time with the option to utilize the AI/ML feature “Analyze Score”

And since a single computer doing a spot in time check is not sufficient to confidently identify issues, the Zscaler Digital Experience provides a holistic vantage point from all locations.

ZDX is a user experience monitoring and improvement platform, and proactive problem resolution is a key benefit since we know administrators and service desk teams are not staring into a system waiting for a problem to occur. With Zscaler’s alerting capabilities and integration with third-party service management tools like ServiceNow, team members can create alerting criteria relevant to the impending change and be proactively alerted if criteria is met. Here are a few examples:

Finally, with the most recent Zscaler + Imprivata integration, a holistic vision of application performance pre- and post-change is a reality for all devices running Zscaler Client Connector, including Imprivata workstations (which, for many healthcare providers, represent a significant percentage of workstations critical for patient care).

In conclusion, by leveraging ZDX, healthcare providers can proactively address potential issues and ensure a seamless transition during infrastructure upgrades. The comprehensive monitoring and alerting capabilities of ZDX, combined with its integration with Imprivata and other service management tools, enable healthcare organizations to deliver the safe and quality care that patients expect and deserve. With ZDX, unexpected IT problems can become a thing of the past, allowing healthcare providers to focus on their primary goal of providing excellent patient care.

Visit our healthcare page for more information about how Zscaler is working with healthcare organizations to secure, simplify and transform with zero trust.

We’d also love to show you the benefits of ZDX firsthand! Schedule a custom demo here.