Founded together with the city of Salvador, the Santa Casa de Misericórdia da Bahia operates through works in education, health, and social assistance. Due to its service directed at the most needy population, both in health and in education, culture, and social action, it is still recognized today as one of the most important charitable institutions in the region.

The high-complexity General Hospital is responsible for providing care for 549 beds in 39 medical specialties. Additionally, the Institution has 5.5 thousand collaborators distributed across its units, who perform about 40 thousand monthly consultations.

Aiming to be a digital hospital, always open to making improvements to serve the population well, Santa Casa decided it was time to update its ERP, thus managing patient data and institutional information with more agility and precision.

Furthermore, Santa Casa aimed to reach the maximum level of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) maturity scale, whose main goal is to encourage the use of IT in the Health sector, from electronic medical records to mobile technologies, exam digitization, to hospital intelligence systems.

The association certifies hospitals by levels, which vary according to the technology used daily, on a scale from 0 to 7.

However, to achieve all these goals, it was necessary to replace its entire data center infrastructure to support the new management system. For this, Santa Casa relied on the project devised by Vortex TI, a company specializing in data centers, which outperformed the major market competitors.

Besides offering the best and most innovative proposal for the new data center infrastructure, Vortex also assisted in seeking financial resources that made the project feasible. Additionally, being a non-profit institution, it benefits from some tax suspensions, allowing better and larger investments used in assisting the population, says Alexandre Tagliari De Rosis, Commercial Director of Vortex TI.

The Vortex team was responsible for the implementation, lasting less than a week, of a fully scalable data center, composed of Cisco equipment in the computing and network environment, and NetApp for data storage and backup.

The total migration time to the new environment was less than a month. “Today, Santa Casa is prepared for scalable and predictable growth in this environment, providing financial security and adequate investment planning,” complements De Rosis.

“The service provided by Vortex TI was very important due to the ease in managing the project, the capital contribution, from start to finish, in the fundraising process. It is the partner in the maintenance and expansion contract of the technologies. As technology needs to be discussed for implementation arise, Vortex is the chosen consultancy,” explains Nestor.

After updating the network infrastructure and installing new servers, the 468-year-old hospital was able to install a new corporate management system and develop new applications that improve the doctor-patient relationship – with appointment scheduling and other services.

The new infrastructure also enables the implementation of systems and applications that not only optimize the hospital's operation – for example, the systems for approving the use of surgical materials and tracking medications (including storage and application) – but also enhance engagement in the doctor-patient relationship, such as appointment and exam scheduling apps.

According to Nestor, “we gained on both sides. In operational performance, because we managed to reduce risks, and also with patient satisfaction, who now knows how long the first appointment will take.” As an example of increased productivity, the executive cites that the number of radiological images produced monthly jumped to 1.8 million, thanks to the new technologies implemented. "The patients were thrilled to see how technology is being applied in care," says the CIO. "The medical staff embraced the technology and the change that the inclusion of intelligence brought to the process," he concludes.