Touro College of Dental Medicine Transforms Education & Clinical Care through Digital Dentistry
TCDM chose Hudson River CIO Advisors to design and deploy the IT infrastructure to transform the traditional dental training and practice to modern digital dentistry.
Introduction
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College (TCDM) was established in 2016 as the first new dental school in New York State in 50 years. With that in mind, TCDM was designed from the ground up to provide students and faculty access to the latest digital platforms in dentistry as well as to offer affordable dental care to the public.
Hudson River CIO relies on colocation at TierPoint’s Hawthorne, NY, data center, which provides high bandwidth to deliver the high-end graphic displays required by Citrix systems; the Disaster Recovery services required for HIPAA compliance; business continuity services for an operations center in a secure, climate-controlled facility; and high-speed data connections to TierPoint’s national data center network.
Challenges
Dentistry is evolving rapidly through new digital dentistry processes. Designing the right IT infrastructure for digital dentistry and education was one of the first challenges in creating TCDM in 2016.
The first bids TCDM received were for a typical dental school IT installation: a network of individual PC workstations. Not only are these networks difficult to maintain, they are a logistical nightmare from a security standpoint.
In addition, digital dentistry requires fast, high-end graphics workstations for 3D dental scans and modeling. These new technologies are typically deployed by private dental practices and are not designed for enterprise scale. TCDM wanted to build a platform that would bring the latest digital technology to students, faculty and patients.
The solution also needed to integrate a practice management system and the Microsoft Office Suite. And the system would need to extend from the academic setting to become part of the clinic, providing everything that goes along with securing and maintaining patient records and ensuring HIPAA compliance.
It quickly became apparent that the old model of networked PCs, used for decades, would not work. What Touro College of Dental Medicine needed was unprecedented.
Solutions
Hudson River CIO’s solution centered on using thin clients and an NVIDIA powered Citrix environment, enabling the school to have a high-end graphics system without all the gear required in a PC-based system. The approach depended on TierPoint’s data center capabilities, including fiber optic connection to the school and the GPU-enabled servers.
The GPU-enabled servers housed at TierPoint, and direct fiber optic cable to the client enable this process for 115 students at the same time without lag.
The design also scales well, so TCDM could grow from the first class of 115 students to 600 students and faculty, and to 110 dental chairs, with very little effort.
Security issues in a healthcare environment are challenging. The solution for TCDM was to employ the Imprivata platform for authentication management and virtual desktop roaming. Students and faculty can log on to any of 550 workstations in the building, quickly and securely.
TierPoint’s data center is central to TCDMs IT infrastructure. TierPoint’s entire data center network is interconnected and offers dark fiber, resulting in low latency and high bandwidth availability. The Hawthorne, NY, data center is HIPAA compliant, including disaster recovery and business continuity resources, which Hudson River CIO Advisors has used to build an operations center inside the TierPoint facility.
Results
Through the partnership with Hudson River CIO Advisors and TierPoint, TCDM boasts a fully digital ecosystem for dentistry to be taught and performed with the latest platforms, in a way that is resilient, scalable and adaptive as technology evolves. The thin client deployment is easier to maintain than individual PCs, resulting in higher reliability and lower support staffing needs.
Using Citrix and NVIDIA GPU-enabled servers they deliver fast, high-resolution 3D graphics modeling and enhanced instruction techniques. Workstation access for users is easy yet secure, and patient records are HIPAA compliant.
At A Glance
Industry
Healthcare/Education
Technology
Colocation
TierPoint Customer
Hudson River CIO Advisors
Challenge
Designing IT infrastructure for state-of-the-art digital dentistry education and clinical care.
Solution
Thin clients, GPU-enabled servers and the Imprivata platform create a digital ecosystem that is flexible for student learning and secure for patient data.
Results
High reliability, low latency thin clients; highly secure, HIPAA compliant operations in a multiple-user environment; ability to scale and while continuously evaluating and iterating state of the art dental and IT technology.
Watch Video:
In Our Customers’ Words
Website
dental.touro.edu
Keep Exploring
Visit our knowledge center to explore expert insights and thought leadership to power your digital breakaway.