The weight that the COVID-19 pandemic has put on our healthcare system has taken its toll, creating unprecedented strain on the organisation. To try to keep up with the demand, healthcare organisations have been thrown into the world of digitalisation to allow them to bring new services, drive revenues, and operate more efficiently.
93% of healthcare organisations have said that they are now innovating in this new digital world with urgency. One major trend the industry is creating is a ‘digital front door’ to help patients easily navigate their care. With an estimated 65% of patients already using this service, the ‘digital front door’ can help with scheduling appointments, estimating costs, engaging with practitioners, fast support lines, reviews, and paying bills online.
This, however, is just the beginning of what is possible for healthcare. But for an organisation that needs to ensure reliable 24/7/365 availability, there is a huge pressure to ensure that this digital experience can meet these high requirements.
To keep up with this demand, the pressure will be on data centers, IT, and facility teams, but what challenges will this actually include?
1. Guaranteeing high availability
Starting with the basics, any edge sites that are set up will need to provide the 24/7/365 availability that healthcare professionals need. Many digital healthcare use cases will be mission-critical or even life-critical, meaning healthcare organisations cannot afford to risk any downtime.
How can this level of availability be achieved? A reliable uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, is the perfect solution to protect you from downtime. The Vertiv Liebert GXT5 UPS is a great model with a double-conversion topology that completely isolates connected equipment from incoming power disturbances. With a zero-transfer time to switch from the main power to the UPS batteries, the switchover is so seamless you won’t even notice it’s happened.
With the addition of Vertiv Power Insight, you can also manage the UPS device to ensure everything is working correctly, giving you warnings of upcoming problems to allow them to be quickly rectified.
2. Reducing maintenance requirements.
These edge sites are often being placed in busy locations, such as hospitals, clinics, research labs, and offices, meaning any maintenance requirements could disrupt daily operations. Not wanting to interrupt the important work being done in these locations, having a UPS with reliable performance is a vital step.
Choosing a UPS with Lithium-Ion batteries, such as a Vertiv Lithium-Ion UPS, allows for exceptional reliability and performance with the batteries lasting up to 10 years. This timespan allows you to leave the UPS system for a significant amount of time without the need for maintenance, causing minimal interruptions to the work day.
Vertiv Power Inisght and predictive battery health algorithm can further help with planning battery replacements, allowing a date to be designated well in advance to avoid potential problems on the day.
3. Streamlining replacements.
Not only do Lithium-Ion Ion batteries need to be replaced far less regularly, they are also far easier to replace. Weighing 40-60% less than traditional VRLA batteries, they are far easier to lift onto racks or place into space-constrained environments.
These smaller batteries allow for the entire UPS to have a smaller frame too, leaving more space for hospital equipment or other IT equipment needed to help save lives.
4. Performing in less-than-optimal conditions.
In healthcare organisations, the priority is on the patients. Saving the best spaces for those in need of care, networking, and computing equipment is often left in the small spaces left over that aren’t always precision-cooled.
Whilst this was a problem with VRLA batteried equipment, with the batteries losing half their lifespan for every 15°F over 77°F, Lithium-Ion battery equipment can provide excellent performance even up to 104°F.
This allows you to add equipment like the Vertiv Lithium-Ion UPS next to other technology or in room-temperature environments without worrying about battery degradation or failure.
5. Reducing the total cost of ownership.
We know that all these pieces of equipment can get pricey, especially when you need to equip a large organisation, but with a Lithium-Ion UPS you can actually save money overall.
With fewer battery replacements needed, you can save money on the cost of new batteries and the labor needed to replace them. This makes the Lithium-Ion UPS systems the lowest total material and labor costs over the useful life of a UPS device.
The Vertiv Lithium-Ion solutions are also backed by a five-year warranty, so in the unlikely case that something goes wrong you will be covered.
Explore our range of Vertiv Lithium-Ion UPS
Vertiv™ Edge Lithium-Ion UPS
High-Performance Line-Interactive Power Protection for Servers and Networking Equipment
Protect your business-critical applications with both power conditioning and battery backup available with the Vertiv Edge Lithium-Ion Interactive UPS range.
Key Benefits:
- A standard 5-year warranty provides peace of mind your investment is protected against potentially costly equipment failures.
- Achieve the lowest total cost of ownership over the lifetime of the UPS with fewer battery replacements and up to 10 years of useable life with Lithium Ion batteries.
- Hot-swappable user replaceable batteries increase the useable life of the UPS by allowing you to easily replace the batteries without disrupting power to connected equipment.
- Internal batteries offer industry-leading runtime (up to 10 minutes at full load) to protect critical equipment during an unexpected power loss.
- Lithium Ion battery technology degrades slower in high-temperature environments, supports up to 10 times more discharge cycles, and delivers faster recharge times compared to VRLA batteries.
Features:
- 0.9 Output power factor delivers more usable power, savings space and cost.
- High efficiency, up to 98% in line mode, to deliver energy savings.
- Color graphic LCD display.
- Flexible 2U rack/tower form factor.
- Up to seven battery-backed outlets.
- Programmable outlets to optimize battery runtime.
- Hot-swappable user-replaceable internal batteries.
- Input breaker device for additional protection to the load in worst case failures.
- Remote emergency shut down capability via EPO port.
- USB communications for UPS status monitoring and management.
- Optional Liebert® IntelliSlot™ IS-UNITY communications card for remote monitoring and control.
- RoHS and REACH compliant.
Explore our range of Vertiv Edge Lithium-Ion UPS
This is just a brief look at the Vertiv UPS systems Range, if you require more Vertiv equipment for your business, you can check our Vertiv microsite for a wide range of Vertiv products to suit your needs.
More Vertiv Products Available from Comms Express:
Vertiv Data Centre UPS | Vertiv Rack Cooling | Vertiv KVM & Console Drawer Solutions | Vertiv Server Cabinets | Vertiv PDUs | Vertiv UPS
If you require any further information on these or any other products that we stock here at Comms Express, please do not hesitate to contact our team who will be only too happy to help.
Until next time…
