IBM has been tapped to provide core disaster
recovery/business continuity IT services for three major New York hospitals
in a contract worth about $380 million.
The deal puts Big Blue in charge of establishing disaster recovery and
back-up facilities for Mount Sinai Hospital, New York University Medical
Center and NYU Downtown Hospital in New York City.
The contract was prompted by Sept. 11, during which New York University
Medical Center’s data center near the World Trade Center had to be evacuated
and later moved to Mount Sinai Hospital’s data center farther uptown.
In addition to disaster recovery planning, the contract includes a plan
to pursue joint projects in Life Sciences research, such as
information-based medicine and medical imaging. That’s in addition to
working with Mount Sinai Hospital and NYU Medical Center to develop
strategies and infrastructure to support the research programs, the
hospitals said. IBM’s research division is also involved in the contract.
In addition to providing duplicate data centers outside Manhattan for
back up in the event of a disaster or other disruption, IBM is slated to
help the The Mount Sinai Hospital upgrade its IT infrastructure in order to
develop new clinical applications, including pharmacy applications and
information systems.
The deals are priced on variable cost structure, which reflects IBM’s
move to provide on-demand services to customers that enable the purchase of
computing services as needs scale up and down.
In addition, the hospitals will be getting infrastructure services such
as data center operations, voice and data networking, and end user computing
in the contract.
The basic IT infrastructure and operations management will be for all
three hospitals, IBM said, while services like clinical systems management
will be provided on an individual basis. IBM’s work with the hospitals will
help them advance their clinical missions to continuously improve patient
care.
“This new agreement will allow us to focus on doing what we do best —
treating patients and searching for the answers to complex medical
challenges,” Richard Donoghue, Senior Vice President for Strategy and
Business Development at NYU Medical Center.
