Bechtle and the University Hospital of Würzburg adopt in-memory technology.

The University Hospital of Würzburg now accesses its database using a solution developed in co-operation with Bechtle's IT system house in Nuremberg. Data can now be retrieved through the hospital's information system (based on SAP R/3) and the i.s.h.med clinical workplace system virtually in real time. Access times have been reduced from 320 to 70 milliseconds (ms). At the same time, the partners also managed to develop a solution for the high data security requirements.

Neckarsulm, 26 October 2011: The in-memory solution adopted at the University Hospital of Würzburg allows rapid retrievals from the database. The project started with the hospital's effort to find a new concept for computing and database-intensive applications, since the existing structure could no longer provide the necessary response and transaction times. In co-operation with its long-time IT partner Bechtle, the hospital arrived at a unique solution: eliminating hard drives with rotating parts to make access speeds over four times as fast. This new technique with access speeds of 70 ms is a significant improvement over the 320 ms reading and writing access speeds provided by conventional technology.

Fast and secure retrievals.

Developed by Klaus Stärk, head of central systems at the hospital, in co-operation with Bechtle's IT system house in Nuremberg, the solution works in a manner similar to in-memory technology: hospital employees can edit and evaluate even large amounts of data in real time. The distinguishing feature of the new technique is that the data are stored not on hard drives or in a cache, but rather in memory close to the CPU. This resulted in a high-performance database solution for the i.s.h.med hospital information system, an industry solution from SAP R/3. In addition to significantly increasing access speeds, the partners were also able to meet the many data security challenges involved. For security purposes, installation of the highly available configuration was divided between two X86-64 servers. The set-up's transparent failover is reflected both externally through the two servers, and internally through the high-performance I/O cards.

High user satisfaction.

"The use of 'in-memory' technology enabled us to dramatically speed up the database performance of our productive SAP ERP system. That also led to a quite noticeable improvement in the overall response times of our SAP system," says Klaus Stärk. The advantage is especially significant in terms of screen layout and retrieving patient information or complex findings and statistics. "The increased speed is visible even to the naked eye. This ensures high satisfaction among users," says Uwe Dittrich, managing director of Bechtle's IT system house in Nuremberg. Bechtle has been a partner of the hospital for many years now, providing it with client, server and storage solutions, as well as a wide range of services.