Industry news: Stratus provides electronic solutions

The company's core business consists of acting as an electronic data carrier, verifier and processor of claims information at points of healthcare provision, like doctors' rooms and private healthcare clinics. Originally, MediKredit's business was built on the network of community pharmacies spread throughout the country but in 2001 this model was extended to include all Healthcare Providers in the Private and Public sectors.

Up to one million transactions a day

In an average business day, between 300 000 and 500 000 transactions are processed through MediKredit's backbone. In the winter months, this load has been known to rise to one million transactions per day.

As a value-added service and veritable safeguard for its customers, one of the company's back-end solutions also deliver on clinical risk management. Wimpie du Plessis, CEO of MediKredit explains that as much as 3% of all of the transactions processed by MediKredit warrant a clinical intervention.

“An example of this could well be where prescribed medications are contra-indicated with a previously prescribed product. As we keep 120 days worth of historical information on all claims processed on the Stratus system to ensure it is always available when a claim needs to be adjudicated, there is a 100% surety that the patient will be alerted to the possible clinical risk, should these products be used at the same time.”

With some of the largest and most-respected private healthcare groups as customers (representing >60% of the local market), and in turn those companies' members as its extended customers, reliability is at the core of MediKredit's value proposition.

Five-second-response time

It prides itself on delivering a 20-second maximum response time to all of is 4.2-million extended customers. Par for the course in MediKredit's opinion however is five seconds – without the Stratus infrastructure it makes use of, the company believes it would not be capable of delivering to this extent.

In addition, du Plessis says the Stratus solution adds the kind of fault-tolerance to ensure that when it comes to patient safety, there's no compromise. “Our Stratus hardware allows us the performance level to keep our response times the best in the industry, while the fault-tolerance of the system keeps us delivering to customers when others can't and we are constantly aware of the critical role we play to ensure our customers' safety,” she says.

“Our reliance on Stratus has afforded us one less thing to worry about,” explains du Plessis.

Not a second of downtime in 12 years

Because the reliability of its Stratus solution, Du Plessis says that in 12 years, the Stratus application has always been available to deliver superior service to their customers.

“During that time, we've even moved premises,” she chuckles. “Through Stratus South Africa loaning us an identical unit to our main server, we were able to drive a redundant drive over to our new premises, where the loan machine was set up, the drive installed, and a couple of minutes later, our system was cut over onto the loan unit. We didn't experience even a second's downtime.”

Du Plessis says that ironically, because of the rock-solid reliability of its Stratus server, the company has had to dedicate the majority of its IT resources to beefing up the reliability of the infrastructure around it. “We have multiple connectivity methods, combining wired and wireless infrastructure for increased reliability. We also have a two-stage uninterruptible power solution, consisting of backup batteries and a generator, which guarantees that even in the most dire situations, the Stratus server can continue operating,” she explains.

Lastly, says du Plessis, the company built a business continuity plan, which makes use of the Stratus server it replaced the last time it upgraded its infrastructure. “Currently we have configured our databases to synchronise to our business continuity site, meaning that at any one time, there's a four hour discrepancy between our live and disaster recovery sites. Since our business continuity site is a backup system for the most fault tolerant solution in the world, we also utilise spare capacity on this server as a test environment for our new software developments.”

A critical success factor

Du Plessis says that MediKredit would not be able to survive without its Stratus infrastructure.

“Our business quite simply can't tolerate any downtime, whether planned or unplanned,” she says, “since we couldn't expect patients to postpone their sickness or need for medical care because we are upgrading our systems or experiencing some form of unforeseen problem.”

“Our Stratus solution has ensured we do not have to even contemplate downtime. We wouldn't change it for the world,” she concludes.

Stratus South Africa country manager, Dick Sharod says that MediKredit is a dream client for his company's continuous availability solutions. “Our solutions are designed to thrive in performance demanding conditions and deliver non-negotiable uptime.”

“MediKredit's business depends on its ability to respond timeously to client requests and to be the proverbial always-on intermediary between healthcare providers and healthcare insurers. The fact that our solutions are key to their ability to continue functioning, and functioning at the rate required, bears vital testimony to our mission – it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that our solutions are true to their commitment of continuous uptime and high-performance.

“We are extremely proud of our relationship with MediKredit and remain committed to further fostering a long-term partnership with this forward-thinking organisation,” he concludes.

About Stratus Technologies

Stratus Technologies is a global solutions provider focused exclusively on helping its customers achieve and sustain the availability of information systems that support their critical business processes. Based upon its 25 years of expertise in server and services technology for continuous availability, Stratus is a trusted solutions provider to customers in manufacturing, life sciences, telecommunications, financial services, public safety, transportation & logistics, and other industries.
For more information visit www.stratus.com