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GE Medical Systems, a $7 billion global leader in medical technology and services, provides solutions for the reliable and efficient acquisition, analysis, and management of patient data in healthcare facilities around the world. These installations are supported by GE Medical Systems Information Technologies, which works closely with third-party contractors to gather the information needed to implement and maintain these sophisticated clinical systems.
Says James Coffey, director of the IT Professional Services Group, "Our staff works onsite to gather the information we need to install the equipment at the facility ? everything from blueprints and AutoCAD drawings to detailed network and connectivity data." Although GE Medical's field service personnel would have been able to transfer this information to headquarters via the company's own VPN, the IT Professional Services Group was reluctant to grant this level of access to outside contractors. Instead, onsite teams relied on an FTP server, a method with limitations of its own. In spite of a dedicated Internet connection, the server experienced connectivity problems and other failures, especially given the inability of field personnel to control the environment to which they were seeking access.
"My partners and I would get called late in the evening to fix the server," says Coffey. "Since we're usually working remotely, we'd often have to wait until the next day to see what was wrong with the server," a situation that introduced needless and costly delays. Given the detailed proprietary company and client information being transferred, the IT Professional Services Group was not willing to compromise security within the FTP environment.
Coffey's group needed a more reliable and secure method for sharing information among individuals. Given the everchanging lineup of team members on any given project, the new solution also needed to be a simple one on which to train and use. Rather than implementing and managing a new in-house technology, the company turned to SpringCM to deliver an immediate impact. "SpringCM had us up and running in a single day," reports Coffey. "Our contractors can be fully trained on it in under an hour, and they've been as happy as we are with the way it works."
Today, members of the IT Professional Services Group and its outside contractors post the information they gather to the company's SpringCM repository, where it is indexed for full-text search and easy access. Team members back at headquarters are alerted that the data is ready for download, and can upload any necessary changes back to the repository for delivery into the field. Information is also converted to PDF for emailing and posting to internal customer Web sites. Onsite, contractors and field service personnel can access the repository via any Web browser, quickly find and view drawings and other documents as needed.
As proprietary information is transferred between headquarters and the field, SpringCM's robust security, from data and password encryption to secure firewalls and a complete audit trail for each physical document, safeguards GE Medical and its clients from unauthorized access. "The fact that it's always available has eliminated the kind of problems we used to have. The ability to control user access lets us ensure the confidentiality of our project information, and security is not a concern. With no more late-night calls to fix the FTP server, we're also sleeping better," says Coffey.
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