Tristar Security in the Telstra Cloud Case Study
With a goal of bringing the same medical services to rural Australia as those enjoyed in our cities, Tristar Medical Group has looked to Telstra’s cloud computing solution to assist in the rapid expansion of its clinics across NSW and Victoria. Of particular need is the ability for doctors and staff to access all medical records and management systems, no matter which clinic they are in at any one time. The security of this store of information is of critical importance and the Telstra network’s ISO 27001 security certification ensures patient confidentiality is compliant with Australian governance and privacy legislation.
Transcript
Kylie El-Sheikh, CEO, Tristar Medical Group
My name is Kylie El Sheikh and I work at Tristar Medical Group in Mildura. We set up Tristar in 2003. From there we now have twenty four medical centres between NSW and VIC. We plan to open four to five medical centres each year.
Dr Khaled El-Sheikh, Managing Director, Tristar Medical Group
My dream is to have every single country town in Australia to have the same standard of health or as close as we can get it. We need to bring the city to the country, that’s what I work on.
Kylie
We had several attempts of trying to get services linked between smaller sites / just to put everything together. We’re talking medical records, management systems, something that could flow throughout the whole group. The patient’s history is probably 50% of knowing how to treat the patient; even something as simple as prescribing medication when a patient’s not a usual location, without having the entire history, can be quite risky for a patient.
Tim Layton, IT Manager, Tristar Medical Group
Tristar needs to be able to provide connectivity to all of its GPs across all of its clinics. They need a centralised database for which their patient info is made available to them. They also need access whilst they’re on the road or in the field, being able to update patient info whilst they’re out. Telstra have provided us several services. We use their Utility Computing solution, which hosts servers for us. We combine that with a fully-managed, IP Network, using a Telstra Next IP® network solution, and also use Telstra’s Next G® network to provide remote access to our clinics.
Cloud computing basically moves your network from being hosted onsite into data centres which provide back-up, scalability and assurance that system support will be available around the clock. Security is extremely important. When you’re dealing with patient info, obviously that info is very sensitive. So we need a network that can secure that info. We were confident that Telstra would be able to provide a secure and reliable network and also the service level agreements around that.
Khaled
The way that they set it up with the cloud and the blades and the different barriers; they actually took me to their centre in Melbourne show me the facility and the security and the privacy. The best you can get is there and this was enough to make me comfortable.
Tim
Passing over the responsibility of hosting that type of network over to Telstra basically frees us up to focus on expansion and growth, which is our main focus.
Kylie
Telstra in itself is impressive. The way that they’ve managed the project: they’ve come in, they’ve understood the business, what it is that we’ve wanted to be able to achieve.
Khaled
They will be a permanent partner as far as I can see. If one patient has a better outcome and better management and we’ve saved one life, that’s worth all the effort.
