Case Study

How St James’s Hospital's journey to cloud transformed cancer care

Learn how our client used cloud to modernize cancer care to enhance diagnostics, compliance, and patient outcomes.

Client
Alliance
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The better the question

How can modernizing infrastructure transform cancer care?

How St James's Hospital is modernizing its infrastructure with EY and Microsoft to improve patient care and research capabilities.

St James’s Hospital, located in Dublin, stands as one of Ireland’s largest national cancer centers and acute academic teaching hospital along with its partners in Trinity College Dublin. Renowned for its impeccable standard of care, the institution has established itself as a leader in digital services, utilizing cutting-edge technology to effectively screen, diagnose and monitor cancer patients across Ireland. Advanced laboratory testing services which include next generation sequencing and specialized molecular genetic testing services are not only integral to patient care but also plays a crucial role in ongoing research efforts, making efficiency paramount and underscoring the critical importance of effective data management.

How EY can help

However, the hospital faced significant challenges due to its aging legacy hardware, particularly across the laboratory service, which hindered compliance and created difficulties in securing and managing environments. The outdated infrastructure also led to a frustrating user experience, ultimately slowing down data processing for diagnostic outcomes and therefore impacting patient care.
 

Recognizing the limitations of its existing data infrastructure, St James’s Hospital understood that it was imperative to modernize in line with its digital strategic goals, innovate to deliver new processing improvements, and enhance its capabilities to continue providing high-quality care. St James’s Hospital is thankful for the support received from the Health Service Executive (HSE) to deliver this project initiative along with EY and Microsoft, as the alignment was essential to modernizing.

 The hospital identified several key areas where its legacy on-premise system required urgent upgrading to a cloud hosted solution. These included the need for greater system resiliency to retain ISO 15189 compliance for medical laboratories, increased data storage capacity to accommodate the high volumes of genome sequencing data generated and implement a seamless user experience to maximize laboratory efficiency and productivity.
 

To address these pressing needs, the hospital sought a strategic partner to implement a cloud solution right for the patient, right for the clinical users and right for its laboratory processes. The combination of EY teams’ extensive experience in cloud solutions and Microsoft’s advanced technology uniquely positioned them to assist St James’s Hospital on their transformative journey. This collaboration not only aimed to modernize the hospital's infrastructure but more importantly, paved the way for new innovative pathways, improved patient outcomes and enhanced operational efficiency, ultimately helping St James’s Hospital stay at the forefront of cancer care and research.

Nurses station
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The better the answer

Revolutionizing diagnostics

The cloud solution at St James’s Hospital enhanced data management, security, and patient care.

The EY-Microsoft Alliance helped future-proof services across St James’s Hospital by developing a customized, bespoke cloud solution using Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. By migrating the hospital's legacy on-premise data infrastructure to Azure, EY teams established a scalable and flexible environment that enhanced its data analysis capabilities which streamlined data management and accessibility across the laboratory teams.

The extensive storage capacity of the new cloud platform facilitated efficient, fast and scalable data analysis following sequencing of patient specimens. This transition not only improved data backup processes for resilience but also strengthened data protection through advanced security protocols. The tools enabled the efficient flow and organization of data as well as easy access and retrieval of data across multiple laboratory systems, analyzers and equipment. The hospital has been empowered by leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning for critical insights from genomic data — essential for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment planning. Furthermore, Microsoft Fabric allowed for parallel data analysis pipelines, further boosting operational efficiency.

A key feature of the solution was the implementation of a common remote desktop. This granted the entire team of laboratory scientists 24/7, 365-day access to the cloud-based genome sequencing tools, enabling timely decision-making and facilitating automated overnight processes that accelerated results analysis. The new backup processes and robust security measures helped ensure that St James’s Hospital could swiftly restore data in the event of an outage or emergency, thereby safeguarding critical patient information and maintaining operational continuity.

Ultimately, the cloud solution provided the resiliency and scalability necessary for St James’s Hospital to meet ISO 15189 regulatory requirements for this could solution — an international standard that sets the accreditation requirements for quality and competence in medical laboratories. With state-of-the-art security controls, the hospital can now securely generate, process and store sensitive genomic data while retaining the agility to evolve and innovate rapidly. This comprehensive approach not only enhances patient care but also positions the hospital for future advancements in medical technology.

Young female doctor walking with digital tablet in corridor at hospital
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The better the world works

A new era

The transformation enabled analysis of over 300 genetic markers and reduced processing times significantly.

The success of this project resides between the exceptional scientific teams in the laboratories at St James’s Hospital and professionals at EY and Microsoft. It has been a two-way street of learning for everyone, with teamwork partnership delivering success for all parties involved. The new cloud platform ticked all the boxes for St James’s Hospital and more exceeding current capacity requirements and addressing future increases in overall laboratory and in particular, cancer  service demands. Where previous gene panels were limited to around  30 genetic markers, the new solution enables analysis of large Comprehensive Gene Panels, including more than 300 individual genetic markers in one sequencing worklist. This offers new and improved opportunities for patients during the screening and diagnosis phase of their care plan.

The platform has also dramatically reduced laboratory processing times in the National MRSA Reference laboratory for real-time data analysis of specimens from approximately nine hours to less than two hours. With additional workflow optimizations, St James’s Hospital has realized a 50% reduction in timelines for scientific output and reporting of results to service users.

The most important achievement from this project has been faster processing times. We've been able to run more samples and tests, ensuring that the patient gets the best diagnosis for them.

Fiona Kearney

Lab Manager, St James's Hospital

reduction in timelines for scientific input and reporting of results.

This project has set the gold standard for genetic testing services, and St James’s Hospital is hopeful that other laboratories across HSE will follow suit, leveraging data as a key advancement in the fight against cancer.

"The big challenge the laboratory faces is big data. We have lots of laboratory analyzers generating gigabytes, terabytes of data, and we need somewhere to store it and process it," said Cathal O’Brien, Chief Clinical Scientist, CMD lab, St James's Hospital. 

The introduction of the new cloud solution marked a turning point for St James's Hospital. With the experience of EY teams and the power of Microsoft technology, the hospital embarked on a journey to modernize its lab operation.

The new cloud solution quickly showed benefits; scientists worked more efficiently with 24/7 analysis pipelines, advanced analytics and easier data sharing, leading to faster patient diagnosis times.

"The most important achievement from this project has been faster processing times. We've been able to run more samples and tests, ensuring that the patient gets the best diagnosis for them," says Fiona Kearns, Lab Manager, CMD lab, St James's Hospital. 

Collaboration was at the center of this success of this project, between St James's Hospital, the Health Service Executive, EY, and Microsoft teams. The teams brought their experience and innovative approach to facilitate a seamless transition to the cloud. "We're incredibly proud that St James's Hospital is leveraging our cloud to streamline operations and create efficiencies in the lab, which is ultimately saving time and creating better outcomes for patients," said a Microsoft spokesperson.

"The transformation at St James's Hospital Laboratory showcases the power of collaboration and innovation. This project revolutionized diagnostics, resolved compliance issues, expanded testing services and has empowered a digital workforce with faster processing and improved efficiency.” said Paul Browne, Head of Microsoft and Cloud Services Group, EY Ireland.

Overall, the transformation at St James's Hospital Laboratory exemplifies a new era of healthcare excellence, setting a precedent for other institutions to follow. By embracing cloud technology, the healthcare industry can enhance patient care and outcomes, ultimately improving the quality of life for patients facing cancer and other critical health challenges.

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