Regional healthcare leader drives down costs and improves on key risk metrics through implementation of comprehensive backup and disaster-recovery solution.
Veeam Software, a leader in data protection and ransomware recovery, has announced it was selected by Mediclinic Middle East to modernize its business-continuity facilities and enhance its resilience as the healthcare leader sets its sights on vigorous growth throughout the region.
Veeam now delivers always-on data availability across Mediclinic’s diverse IT environment via a one-stop solution that aligns with all backup and disaster-recovery requirements.
“We see the Veeam solution as a powerful means to maintain our position at the forefront of healthcare innovation,” said Raziel Peña, Senior Manager, ICT Operations at Mediclinic Middle East.
“We can now, with confidence, support exceptional 24-7 healthcare by driving down our RPO [recovery point objective – a metric that measures an organization’s tolerance for data loss] significantly. Veeam’s solution slims our risk profile because it is designed for the highest possible service continuity. Our IT team has access to rapid support, and our finance team is impressed by the resultant reduction in IT costs.”
Mediclinic Group is an established global name in healthcare services, with a presence in Switzerland, South Africa, Namibia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Mediclinic Middle East began operations in the UAE in 2007 and has become one of the largest private healthcare providers in the country, with seven hospitals, 26 clinics, more than 1,000 inpatient beds, all run by some 7,200 dedicated healthcare professionals.
Going digital
To maintain its reputation for delivering top-grade healthcare services, Mediclinic Middle East embarked on a bold digital transformation program that included innovative leverage of automation, AI, and a range of other technologies. It centralized its Electronic Health Record (EHR), creating a single source of truth for all its clinics and hospitals.
“Our digitization was aimed at supporting our growth strategy, which was happening most notably via acquisition,” said Peña. “Most recently, we welcomed a UAE-based healthcare provider to the Mediclinic family. As our newest hospital, Mediclinic Parkview in Dubai, celebrates its fifth anniversary, we are ramping up our campaign to extend our reach, and to help more people live happy and healthy lives across the continuum of care.”
Peña explained that Mediclinic’s growth plans necessitated a modernization of its IT infrastructure as data volumes escalated sharply. An organization-wide review identified disaster recovery as a key target of optimization because the healthcare provider’s growth was found to be outpacing its data-protection measures.
“IT stakeholders do not live in a vacuum,” he said. “Every week we see ransomware claim another victim. When you are responsible for human lives and you try to factor in the risk of IT downtime, you quickly realize that you can have zero tolerance for operational disruption. Our review showed that we were running multiple live backup solutions and we had to face the fact that we couldn’t predict how long it would take us to recover if we were hit by a cyberattack or natural disaster. It was time for a change.”
Veeam on the scene
Veeam tools were already in use at Mediclinic and after an evaluation of other options, the company’s backup solution stood out for its capability to give granular control to Mediclinic’s IT team. Veeam’s scalability and flexibility also appealed to Mediclinic’s procurement team as it weighed the solution’s benefits against the healthcare organization’s plans for regional growth. Decision makers were also drawn to features like Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and Veeam’s ability to “make short work of complex data management tasks,” according to Peña.
Veeam now backs up more than 620 Mediclinic virtual servers, hosting critical applications such as EHR, medical imaging, and R&D. For added resilience, Veeam’s solution performs a full backup of Mediclinic Middle East’s main datacenter and takes a copy of the file servers installed at each of its premises. Mediclinic even entrusts the backup of its Microsoft 365 applications to Veeam, preferring this option over Microsoft’s “perfectly good” native backup capabilities, Peña said.
Since implementation, Veeam’s solution has driven down the recovery point objective (RPO) metric “significantly”, according to Peña, which translates to a sizeable reduction in potential data loss should a cyber incident occur. This, Peña said, gives confidence to the organization as a whole as it pursues its growth ambitions, especially given the “rapid and high level of support” delivered by Veeam. Peña’s team put Veeam’s responsiveness to the test when requesting custom security patches, and found that Veeam delivered inside two weeks.
Additionally, Mediclinic enjoys cost savings and enhanced operational efficiencies. As multiple backup systems became a single, integrated platform, the company saved on software-licensing costs while reducing IT maintenance workloads and adding new functionality. Now, Mediclinic Middle East is prepared for its next phase of growth, supported by a market-leading backup solution and responsive support.
