SSO helps Rivierenland Hospital Meet Gov't Compliance

The Rivierenland Hospital, situated in the Dutch town of Tiel, is a regional hospital with 373 beds and 2 polyclinics. Like all other Dutch hospitals, the Rivierenland Hospital is faced with the challenge of adopting new systems in support of the introduction of the Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD). Systems administrator Jos Meeuwsen is responsible for this implementation and started preparations for this implementation project over two years ago. The hospital installed a Citrix environment to make the EPD and other hospital applications accessible to all users. The implementation of a new platform provided the hospital with an ideal opportunity for creating a solution to relieve the burden on the helpdesk. Jos Meeuwsen: “We wanted to benefit from a requirement. Network changes resulting from employees entering and leaving took up a great deal of the helpdesk’s valuable time. Our helpdesk would process between 3 and 10 requests a day, and each request would take approximately 20 minutes. This process was very time-consuming because the requested changes had to be implemented in Active Directory as well as in eDirectory (Novell). For this reason we wanted a solution that allowed us to perform such tasks more quickly.”

Creating an Interface between Beaufort and Active Directory

Jos Meeuwsen found the solution in User Management Resource Administrator (UMRA) by Tools4ever. UMRA offers an interface between the HRM system (Beaufort) and Active Directory. All the changes the HR department makes in the HRM system are now automatically implemented by UMRA in Active Directory. “We now have a single point of entry for user account changes: the HR department, and thanks to daily synchronization between the HRM system and Active Directory, new accounts can be ready for use within a day.” The Rivierenland Hospital’s IT environment had been based on Novell eDirectory. Since the migration to Microsoft Active Directory, the Novell environment has remained operational for a number of applications, but it will be phased out in the longer term. To enable password synchronization between the Active Directory and eDirectory environments in the current hybrid set-up, the Rivierenland Hospital selected Password Synchronization Manager (PSM) by Tools4ever. This solution has made the inadequate Novell DirXML interface redundant.

Single Sign On with an Access Pass

A year later, Jos Meeuwsen was tasked with selecting a Single Sign-On solution. End-users indicated their frustration at having to remember too many log-in credentials. The need to comply with the government regulations also required a solution that would eliminate the use of general accounts. Jos Meeuwsen: “We were already using solutions by Tools4ever to our full satisfaction, so the choice was easy. We also found the solutions by other vendors to be quite expensive by comparison.”

With Enterprise Single Sign-On Manager (E-SSOM) by Tools4ever, end-users only have to log-in once. After that, they have direct access to all the required applications, without the need to log-in again. Because E-SSOM is linked to users’ access passes, they can log-in exclusively using their own account, and thanks to E-SSOM’s Follow-Me feature, the specialists at the Rivierenland Hospital can switch between workstations with great speed. The applications they have opened on one workstation will be available directly on the other workstation.

E-SSOM currently supports Single Sign On for a variety of applications at the Rivierenland Hospital, such as the healthcare solutions Soarian (Siemens), X/Care (McKesson), Patient Data Management System (PDMS) and the Zamicom hospital pharmacy information system. “E-SSOM is very well received within our organization,” notes Jos Meeuwsen. “We have received compliments from various departments, including the usually highly-critical Intensive Care department. This is an extremely user-friendly solution and it is crucial for our compliance with government regulations.”

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