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In This Issue:
BICS Modernization and Windows 2000 Rollout
Over the course of the last decade, BWH has won national acclaim for its sophisticated information systems, enhancing patient care and reducing errors in the process. As a way to stabilize and grow the existing hospital information system, the Department of Information Systems (IS) has been hard at work revising the BICS system and implementing Windows 2000 hospital-wide.
BICS Modernization is a major multi-year IS initiative that involves migrating the application code to a new platform, as vendors are reducing support for the existing BICS platform.
BICS is comprised of some 45,000 programs. As a result, the first year of the BICS Modernization project focused on planning a new quality assurance/testing platform, and an updated development platform.
“It is important to note that the BICS user interface won’t change,” said Sue Schade, BWH chief information officer. “BICS screens will still look the same as they do now. As a result, we won’t need to go through a major retraining effort, and this major infrastructure effort should be fairly transparent to our users.”
New applications being developed will be web-based. Examples include the NICU Order Entry, Medication Administration Record (MAR), and Pharmacy systems.
As part of a two-year migration plan, Partners Information Systems is rolling out Windows 2000 to replace Windows 95 as the standard operating system on all workstations (PCs) at the BWH, BWPO, and across all of Partners. Windows 2000 provides a more stable platform than Windows 95, and improves integration of user accounts and applications, desktop security, and memory management for Partners clinical applications. Windows 2000 is also required because Microsoft and most third party vendors are phasing out support for Windows 95.
As part of the Windows 2000 rollout, existing clinical computers have been upgraded. New hardware will also be going in clinical and patient care areas. Recovered workstations from these areas will be re-deployed to other areas within the hospital that need upgrades for Windows 2000. As of October, some 450 clinical computers have been upgraded to Windows 2000. To date, more than 150 additional public workstations have been upgraded and another 450 are scheduled to be completed by January.
Over the course of the next 12 - 18 months, more than 5,000 workstations will be upgraded to Windows 2000. This enormous undertaking will require the testing and certifying of more than 400 BWH applications in the Windows 2000 environment.
High priority is being given to areas that have applications that require Windows 2000. These areas have been identified by hospital leaders, and are being reviewed by Network Services for staging. Staging is determined primarily based on the number of applications that the department uses and the size of the department. The procedure for the department rollout is designed to ensure that all applications will continue working after the upgrade.
Please email all questions regarding the Windows 2000 rollout to: BWH – Win2K Rollout