Economic analysis of cloud-based desktop virtualization implementation at a hospital

Abstract

BackgroundCloud-based desktop virtualization infrastructure (VDI) is known as providing simplified management of application and desktop, efficient management of physical resources, and rapid service deployment, as well as connection to the computer environment at anytime, anywhere with anydevice. However, the economic validity of investing in the adoption of the system at a hospital has not been established.MethodsThis study computed the actual investment cost of the hospital-wide VDI implementation at the 910-bed Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Korea and the resulting effects (i.e., reductions in PC errors and difficulties, application and operating system update time, and account management time). Return on investment (ROI), net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR) indexes used for corporate investment decision-making were used for the economic analysis of VDI implementation.ResultsThe results of five-year cost-benefit analysis given for 400 Virtual Machines (VMs; i.e., 1,100 users in the case of SNUBH) showed that the break-even point was reached in the fourth year of the investment. At that point, the ROI was 122.6%, the NPV was approximately US$192,000, and the IRR showed an investment validity of 10.8%. From our sensitivity analysis to changing the number of VMs (in terms of number of users), the greater the number of adopted VMs was the more investable the system was.ConclusionsThis study confirms that the emerging VDI can have an economic impact on hospital information system (HIS) operation and utilization in a tertiary hospital setting.

A scoping review of cloud computing in healthcare

“…Yoo et al have chosen a more conservative approach by establishing a private cloud within Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (Korea) based on virtualization technology, a virtual desktop infrastructure and 400 virtual machines, which supported easy and overall access to each of the hospital’s information systems from all devices throughout the hospital. For this implementation they performed a five year cost-benefit analysis and showed that their approach reached its break-even point in the fourth year of the investment [ 51 ].…”

“…If applications are described they are usually in a prototype status [ 1 , 7 , 10 - 13 , 15 , 17 - 22 , 28 , 29 , 31 , 33 , 34 , 39 - 45 , 47 , 48 , 55 , 58 , 59 , 61 - 70 , 72 - 75 , 93 - 101 ]. Successful implementations of cloud systems in healthcare were only described in 13 of the 104 articles [ 9 , 25 , 27 , 32 , 36 - 38 , 51 , 57 , 60 , 71 , 78 , 102 ].…”

Primena i bezbednosni rizici Cloud rešenja u eZdravlju

“…Procenjena NSV (neto sadašnja vrednost) je najveća za javni oblak (15.4), zatim sledi hibridno rešenje sa NSV = 6.4 i na kraju je privatni oblak (5.7). Yoo et al [13], razmatrali su isplativost zamene postojećeg bolničkog informacionog sistema (EHR, PACS -Picture Archiving and Communications System, i drugih klinič-kih i administrativnih servisa) rešenjem u oblaku. Svim servisima je moguće pristupiti putem mobilnih platformi, nezavisno od operativnog sistema (Windows, Android, iOS) putem 400 virtuelnih mašina (1100 zaposlenih).…”

Applications of Cloud Computing in Health Systems

“…It can solve various healthcare issues, such as data storage, data transmission, high setup cost, software maintenance and optimizing resources (Masrom & Rahimli, 2014). For example, in 2012, Yoo et al managed to combine virtualization technology, a virtual desktop infrastructure, and 400 virtual machines to a construct a cloud within Bundang Hospital of Seoul National University (Korea) to allow managed but easy and pervasive access to hospital information from mobile devices throughout the hospital (Yoo, Kim, Baek, Suh, Chung, and Hwang, 2012).Another example is a work carried out in 2011 by Yao et al The community cloud-based medical service delivery framework (CMSDF) developed in that work allowed resource exchange between a large general hospital and its affiliated healthcare institutions. They also tested a prototype CMSDF, where a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) of a large hospital was allowed to share its medical software (as SaaS) with its affiliated healthcare institutions (Yao, Han, Ma, Xue, Chen, & Li, 2014).…”