How VMware’s solution stack is modernising Saudi Arabia’s healthcare services

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health, MoH runs the country’s public healthcare service, which consists of thousands of hospitals, clinics and health centres catering to a growing population of more than 35 million people. The MoH, which is one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest employers also handles infection prevention and control, including COVID-19 vaccinations and records, and testing and monitoring of visitors entering the country.

The Ministry of Health is committed to the transformation of Saudi Arabia’s healthcare sector. Under this plan, each cluster, and most of the major cities, have a healthcare city, or a dedicated zone with large hospitals, specialist health centres, clinics and pharmacies to serve the area.

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VMware’s solution snapshot

• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware Vsan
• VMware NSX-T Data Center
• VMware vRealize Suite
• VMware vCenter
• VMware HCX
• VMware vSphere

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To meet the growing demand for healthcare services in Saudi Arabia, and to help boost the efficiency and agility of the provision of services, the MoH needed to simplify and modernise its IT systems. It decided to do this by moving to a unified, multi-cloud strategy with VMware, with all workloads under one umbrella and the ability to offer innovative IT services to the entire healthcare sector across the country. This move was also in line with the aims of Saudi Vision 2030 to develop an integrated health system based on the health of the individual and society.

With technology taking an ever more central role in healthcare, the MoH wanted to transform its IT systems to increase efficiency and agility, and to enable it to offer secure, innovative, cloud-based IT services to all public healthcare providers and facilities across the country. This would boost the ability of the healthcare sector to improve its delivery of care by massively boosting efficiency, saving valuable resources and giving healthcare providers flexibility to grow and innovate.

To achieve these aims, the MoH’s IT department knew that it needed to simplify and unify its systems and enable the rapid provision of cloud-based services to healthcare providers across the country.

The MoH decided to spread its IT workloads across various service providers, including telecom operators STC and Mobily, and unify everything under VMware Cloud Foundation, VCF hybrid cloud platform. The increased resilience allowed workloads to be moved instantly between providers, while giving the MoH’s IT team visibility of, and the ability to manage, workloads from a single pane of glass. This solution also future proofs the network, by enabling the IT team to add new locations such as private clouds which can be easily integrated into the multi cloud layer, and then controlled from the same portal.

The deployment of VMware VCF includes VMware NSX-T Data Center as the platform for building the secure virtual cloud network; VMware vRealize Suite as the cloud management suite to provide automation, operations, log analytics, and lifecycle management on-premises; and VMware vSAN to reduce storage complexity and cost.

The deployment also included VMware vCenter to gain visibility across the hybrid cloud from a single console, and VMware vSphere to enable the MoH to develop and deploy modern applications from the cloud. The MoH deployed VMware HCX to help streamline application migration, workload rebalancing and business continuity across the environment.

With the full VCF stack deployed, Saudi Arabia’s entire public healthcare system is set to benefit from the resiliency, agility and efficiency created by the shared cloud platform. Each healthcare facility will save valuable resources by having access to virtual infrastructure, storage, machines, and as-a-service applications from the Ministry of Health. They will also be able to design and deploy applications from the cloud, giving them the freedom to innovate and provide stellar services to patients.

By having unified cloud system, doctors, nurses and patients will have reliable and secure access to patient records wherever they are, and all healthcare professionals, including hospital managers, will have improved access to the data they need, without worrying about potentially disruptive IT outages.

The MoH and VMware are continuing to move additional workloads on to the new environment, and more IT resources will be made available for healthcare facilities to access and use via their IT admin portals. In the coming months, the MoH is planning to deploy more VMware solutions including VMware Carbon Black for additional cybersecurity, VMware Workspace ONE for secure distributed working, and VMware Tanzu to enable Kubernetes in vSphere, which will bring additional application development capabilities to the Saudi Arabia’s public healthcare providers.

“As Saudi Arabia’s population continues to rise, and demand for world-class healthcare intensifies, this project with VMware has ensured that the MoH and the country’s healthcare providers are prepared for the future with the ability to innovate and deliver healthcare for the 21st century,” says Eng Khalid Almedbel, CIO Ministry of Health.

“All departments have gained agility, mobility, and can achieve a faster response to business requirements, which will elevate healthcare in the Kingdom,” he added.

“We look forward to working in partnership with the MoH as it continues to move workloads to the new environment and offer more cloud-enabled services to healthcare providers across the country,” said Saif Mashat, Managing Director, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen, VMware.

Health clusters and hospitals are now able to gain rapid access to all types of IT services from an intuitive service menu. This enables easy access to IT resources, from new email accounts to back-up services, virtual machines and security.

This project with VMware has ensured that the Ministry of Health and the country’s healthcare providers are prepared for the future with the ability to innovate and deliver healthcare for the 21st century.