The Information and Communication Technology Department at the Ministry of Health recently launched the first phase of its Private Cloud Computing, the first cloud computing system to be utilized in the Kingdom’s public and health sectors.
The first phase of the project provides infrastructure services (IaaS), which will allow the Ministry to benefit the most from its investments in the field of information and communications technology. The system will empower workers in information centers to provide users with fast and efficient infrastructure services.
Dr. Mohammed R. Al Yemeni, Advisor to the Minister & General Supervisor of ICT, stated that this is the first step in an ambitious project to improve service. The project also provides for the launch of the platform “PaaS” and software “SaaS” in the near future.
The Ministry is currently working through the ICT department to implement the National e-Health Strategy Project, which isupported by His Excellency the Minister of Health, Dr. Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Rabeeah. As a part of its strategy, the Ministry sees the importance of applying up-to-date information and communications technology to improve the overall delivery of healthcare services to the public.
The aim of the National e-Health Strategy Project is to develop an electronic transactions system to enhance the more than 100 vital development projects currently being implemented by MOH. The Ministry’s vision is to improve the quality and standards of healthcare in the Kingdom. To achieve this vision, the Ministry of Health set a business strategy and a five-year plan to include e-health has a major factor in developing and providing these services. Therefore, MOH developed their e-health strategy and five-year plan to support the main objectives of the Ministry: providing care for patients, linking service providers at all levels of healthcare, measuring the healthcare performance and enhancing healthcare quality to meet international standards.
Assistant General Supervisor of ICT, Dr. Abdullah Al Wehaibi, stressed that launching this phase of the service enables the Ministry to double the number of virtual servers quickly and with a high level of flexibility. This environment supports a large number of operating systems, memory capacities and storage units, where all these services can be managed through a “Single Pane of Glass.”Using the Self-Service Portal reduces the required time to meet users’ needs from a matter of weeks to just a few hours.
Eng. Ahmed Al Hodaithy, Project Office Assistant Director in the ICT Department, stated that the storage capacity through the Cloud Computing system is based on the latest advances in the field of high-level storage. The system also provides services such as virtual storage and accurate presentation tools. The technology allows the current real capability to be raised from approximately 200terabytestoinfinity, depending upon the intelligent management systems provided for this service.
Al Hodaithy added that environments used in this project consist of high-performance servers (BladeSystem Matrix) and high storage devices of Next Generation, Cloud-Ready 3Par SAN Storage, in addition to network equipment(routers, switches, wireless, security) and a package of infrastructure software with special features to serve Cloud Computing.