About Austin Health
Established in 1882 with the opening of the Hospital for Incurables, Austin Health has been providing a range of quality healthcare services for the past 139 years. Austin Health is one of Australia’s leading providers of health services. Victorian based, the organisation has a 10,500-stong workforce serving one of the city’s fastest growing areas with a combined population of 350,000. It routinely handles more than 110,000 patient admissions each year.
Challenge
Modern healthcare is heavily reliant on information technology and, over the years, Austin Health has built a complex IT infrastructure that supports all facets of its activities. Everything from patient records and administration to clinical and diagnostic areas rely on a portfolio of applications and supporting hardware.
For more than 10 years, Austin Health had relied on Citrix XenApp 6.5 based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 as a means of delivering over 150 traditional client/server based applications (and data) to staff. This technology allowed staff to access core applications from a variety of devices without the need for applications to be installed and managed on the workstations. This technology also enabled clinical staff to be able to rapidly log on and swap workstations, allowing all their applications to follow them, with zero productivity loss.
In 2018, a decision was taken to migrate the organisation to Microsoft 365 as part of its digital transformation. It was anticipated this would improve productivity and ensure staff had access to the latest tools.
Working with long-term technology partner Linktech Australia, the Austin Health IT team evaluated what would be required to support the Microsoft 365 migration. It was quickly determined that the existing Citrix XenApp 6.5 in place would not be suitable, as it was end of life as it didn’t support Microsoft Teams.
Solution
Once the migration decision had been ratified by senior management in early 2019, the Austin Health IT team and Linktech Australia got to work. A roadmap was formulated that would shift the existing infrastructure from XenApp 6.5 to version Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912 which supports Microsoft Teams optimisation.
Dziura says the migration was particularly relevant for Austin Health’s ‘Tap-on, Tap-off’ (TOTO) log-in system used by clinical staff. This had been designed to allow staff to easily move between devices and have access to the applications they required to complete their roles.
Linktech Australia designed and deployed a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop environment based on version 1912. The infrastructure was spread across a virtual data centre that spans across two sites to provide high availability in the event of a single datacentre failure. Microsoft FSLogix was introduced to support Microsoft Teams and other user profile data. Existing machine catalogs were condensed to a total of four and both Server 2016 and Server 2019 were introduced.
The entire environment was federated with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, allowing staff to access the environment using their Azure AD identity inline with Microsoft 365, introducing the ability to perform conditional access invoking Azure Multifactor Authentication, and removing the need for the existing Symantec VIP MFA solution.
The Citrix version migration went smoothly and was completed in February 2020.
Benefits
Once live, the new Citrix infrastructure was quickly providing benefits for users. Rather than having a lengthy log-in process when moving between devices, staff could quickly access the systems they needed. Staff utilising teams via Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops have the same user experience as those using Teams installed on their local Windows 10 devices, including voice and video. There are no performance issues, and staff are able to rapidly jump between devices, resuming exactly where their left off no matter what the application being used.
“The log-in process had been getting longer and longer as our IT infrastructure had aged, and it had become almost unusable,” says Chris Dziura. “However, this has now been significantly improved and we don’t get anyone complaining about log in times anymore. This is not just about better productivity, but also better delivery of services as seconds can make a big difference in a healthcare environment.”
Chris Dziura says the new Citrix infrastructure is now supporting more than 1500 concurrent user sessions each day and more than 5000 user profiles have been created across the organisation.
Logons times have been massively decreased due to the introduction of Microsoft’s FSLogix profile container technology. Admin staff are finding it significantly easier to monitor and manage sessions thanks to the new single pane management console.