Cardiobase, a leading provider of Cardiovascular Information System (CVIS) solutions, delivers reliable and easy-to-use systems that ensure streamlined connectivity with hospital systems across Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Their solutions are highly tailored to meet the unique needs of each hospital and department, facilitating improved patient care, reduced administrative burdens, and enhanced data accuracy. Cardiobase integrates with hospital-wide systems like patient administration, electronic medical records, and specialized devices, ensuring that cardiology departments benefit from best-in-class solutions while maintaining interoperability and communication across departments.

Hospitals have traditionally relied on on-premise data centers for storing electronic data, believing this method offers the highest security for sensitive patient information. However, today's cloud solutions have evolved to offer significantly higher levels of security to medical facilities, better protecting against threats ranging from data breaches to malicious internal acts. While Cardiobase supports organizations using either on-premise or cloud-based solutions, they strongly advocate for healthcare organizations to adopt cloud-based solutions. This advocacy is driven by the enhanced security, easier maintenance, innovation potential, and overall benefits these solutions bring to both staff and patients.

Conquering on-premise infrastructure challenges and risks

Cardiobase encounters critical challenges while working with hospitals that rely on on-premise data centers and outdated infrastructure, which hinders their ability to deliver solutions with the highest levels of efficiency, security, and innovation.

One of the primary challenges with on-premise solutions is the increased burden on internal IT staff to manage security effectively. On-premise systems require constant attention to prevent unauthorized access, which can be difficult to maintain with limited resources. The sensitive nature of medical records, necessitates a comprehensive security framework that can be challenging for on-premise solutions to fully implement.By shifting this responsibility to a cloud-based solution like Heroku, Cardiobase alleviates the security concerns for hospitals, allowing them to focus more on patient care and other critical areas without worrying about potential vulnerabilities. Competing priorities in hospitals also significantly delays software updates and feature deployments. Traditional on-premise systems require extensive change management and approval processes, resulting in long release cycles and delaying updates.. Development teams often need to bundle multiple features together, necessitating drawn out testing cycles to ensure compatibility. This approach turns what could be a quick deployment into a months-long process. Before modernizing their CVIS solutions with cloud technology, Cardiobase experienced on-premise release cycles extending up to six months, which stifled innovation and responsiveness to customer needs.

Managing on-premise infrastructure requires a large team of network and infrastructure engineers responsible for maintaining servers, managing disk space, and overseeing firewalls. Such manual management is time-consuming and diverts resources away from customer-focused innovation and solution development. The need for extensive manual intervention not only slows down operational processes but also increases the likelihood of human error, further compromising system reliability and efficiency.

Cardiobase innovates med tech using Heroku’s cloud capabilities

When Cardiobase first implemented Heroku, they approached it as an incubator for a new cloud-based approach to addressing hospital communications needs. Within about a month, they had a minimum viable product online, which allowed them to innovate and bring new solutions to market quickly. This initial use of Heroku significantly streamlined Cardiobase’s development process, reducing the complexity of managing infrastructure and enabling the team to focus more on delivering value to their customers. They utilized Heroku dynos to host their web application and relied on Heroku Managed Data Services to enhance application performance and usability through optimized data access.

As Cardiobase matured in their use of Heroku, they integrated the platform more deeply into their daily operations. Heroku’s CI/CD Pipeline facilitated continuous deployment, allowing Cardiobase to develop, test, and deploy new features daily. This significantly reduced their release cycle time, which previously extended up to six months, enabling quicker responses to customer demands. They implemented build pipelines that created review applications to test scenarios similar to production environments, ensuring that any changes could be thoroughly vetted without impacting live systems. This approach improved the speed and reliability of their deployments, enhancing their ability to meet the diverse needs of each hospital they served.

Day-to-day, Heroku’s automation capabilities and robust security features have become integral to Cardiobase’s operations. The platform’s automated infrastructure management, including server maintenance and security patches, means that Cardiobase no longer needs a large team of network engineers, allowing them to focus on customer solutions and innovation. Heroku’s security measures, including ISO and SOC compliance, along with the ephemeral nature of its infrastructure, have provided Cardiobase with a secure and reliable environment for their applications. This has significantly reduced the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches, addressing one of the primary challenges they faced with on-premise systems. Overall, Heroku has enabled Cardiobase to deliver high-quality, efficient, and secure healthcare solutions, improving patient care and operational efficiency in hospitals.

Heroku has significantly improved the speed and reliability of our solution delivery, drastically improving patient care. We can go from a customer conversation to a solution delivered to production in minutes. Mark Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Cardiobase

Cardiobase achieves higher client satisfaction and security standards utilizing Heroku

Since integrating Heroku, Cardiobase has significantly improved efficiency, security, and client satisfaction, addressing their core challenges, transforming their workflows, and boosting their ability to deliver high-quality healthcare solutions. Heroku's platform has allowed Cardiobase to build competitively priced solutions without needing a full DevOps team, enabling them to support a larger client base without increasing resource needs.

Efficiency gains

Cardiobase's adoption of Heroku has significantly optimized their release cycle and operational efficiency. Previously, the release cycle spanned up to six months, causing delays in delivering new features and improvements. With Heroku’s CI/CD pipeline, Cardiobase reduced this cycle to just two weeks, and now supports multiple daily deployments, at times achieving more than 50 deployments in a single day. These rapid iteration and deployment capabilities allow their team to respond swiftly to customer feedback and demands. Heroku's platform has streamlined Cardiobase's development workflow, enabling rapid testing, deployment, and rollback of features. Developer productivity has increased by at least 50%, and average incident resolution time has been reduced ~99%, from half a day to approximately five minutes. Additionally, Heroku's automated infrastructure management allows Cardiobase to achieve more with a smaller team, enabling them to allocate additional resources to innovation and customer-focused solutions.

Security improvements and incident reduction

One of the most crucial benefits Heroku has brought to Cardiobase’s solutions is significantly stronger security capabilities. Heroku’s robust security compliance and measures have dramatically reduced the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches. The ephemeral nature of Heroku’s infrastructure, with frequent rotations of application instances, ensures that long-term malware presence is mitigated. As a result, incidents caused by infrastructure management have decreased from about three per year for on-premise solutions to zero. This high level of security compliance reassures clients and helps Cardiobase secure new contracts with confidence.

Client satisfaction and elevated patient care

The efficiency and security provided by Cardiobase's cloud solutions have led to higher client satisfaction compared to the experience of using on-premise solutions. Enhanced data accuracy and ability to capture and sync patient information using cloud solutions has significantly reduced the risk of errors, directly contributing to improved patient care. The ability to deploy new features rapidly and the stability provided by Heroku’s platform ensures that their customers receive continuous improvements without downtime. Initially skeptical of moving away from on-premise solutions, Cardiobase's cloud customers now appreciate the enhanced security, reliability, and efficiency of the cloud-based approach. This positive feedback and trust have solidified Cardiobase’s continued reputation as a leading provider of cardiovascular information systems.

Using Heroku, we can deploy every day with zero downtime, ensuring our application remains fully functional. For example, during a recent video call with a customer, a developer made their requested changes in real-time. By the end of the call, the update was already deployed. Mark Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Cardiobase

What's next for Cardiobase?

Cardiobase plans to continue leveraging Heroku’s platform to optimize their deployment pipeline and introduce more advanced features. One focus will be on utilizing Heroku’s capabilities to support remote home monitoring and follow-ups for cardiac rehabilitation, which are gaining popularity due to their convenience and health benefits for recovering patients. Heroku’s infrastructure will enable Cardiobase to support these advanced healthcare solutions, ensuring accurate and secure connectivity between patients across multiple locations and the hospitals providing them care, which would not be possible using an on-premise solution.

Looking ahead, Cardiobase aims to expand their services by implementing statewide solutions that facilitate improved collaboration and secure patient data syncing between hospitals. This approach will allow for better patient care as patients move within a region for personal reasons or medical providers. Additionally, Cardiobase plans to use their success stories to help other healthcare organizations transition from on-premise to cloud-based solutions, enabling them to gain the advantages of enhanced security, reliability, and usability. By staying ahead of industry trends and focusing on innovative cloud-driven healthcare solutions, Cardiobase is poised to remain a leading force in shaping the future of healthcare technology. To explore more, visit: cardiobase.com.