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Since Family Heath Systems
(FHS) was established in 1983, it has been responsible
for the introduction of computer technology at
all Health Authorities. The result is some 4,000
computer terminals in daily use by about 5,000
staff. FHS systems form a core primary care management
base, which is used to maintain patient registrations,
administer screen programmes and handle payments
to GPs, pharmacists and opticians. Nationally,
over 60 million patient records are held on local
databases whilst FHS financial systems control
a budget of approximately £5 billion
a year, 20% of the net expenditure of the NHS.
The computing environment at FHS includes 14 Hewlett
Packard machines, 5 IBM RS6000s, 3 Apricots and
2 Dell SCO boxes and a DEC Ultrix system. This
mirrors the computing installations at Health
Authorities, which currently number 70 HP 9000
UNIX machines, 30 IBM RS6000s and 1 SCO Apricot
box.
Geoff Castle, Technical
Services Support Manager at FHS said: "Each
time we receive a new project from the Department
of Health, often a major database implementation,
we had to reconfigure or upgrade our existing
machines, or invest in new hardware. With the
rapid increase in the number of UNIX systems,
the applications and projects have been put
together in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. By
the middle of last year, the systems were so
complex that we felt we needed an accurate,
scientific approach to improving performance
rather than relying on instinct. Phil Cooper
from FHS was responsible for identifying suitable
products and from an initial list of twelve
alternatives, he narrowed this down to four,
finally selecting Athene, primarily because
of its use of the tools already resident in
the UNIX system.
Athene has achieved some
notable successes in the management of FHS’s internal systems.
One exercise indicated that there was 98% utilization
of one of the systems over the Christmas period.
Using Athene to analyze what was actually happening,
Phil Cooper discovered that a routine checking
operation was responsible for this potential system
overload. "A small change to the analysis
routine reduced the utilization to a mere 20%
and at the same time saved us having to spend
nearly £20,000 on new hardware."
Following a trial, it has been agreed that performance
monitoring for Health Authorities will be included
as a standard offering for FHS'’ planned work
schedule in the year ahead. Geoff Castle commented:
"All the HAs are on a fairly tight budget,
so the more performance we can squeeze out of an
existing system, the better. In the past, we have
only been able to carry out an intensive breakdown
of the system, which was very time-consuming and
just provided a ‘snapshot’ view. With
Athene, we are typically monitoring and collecting
data over a ten day period enabling us to find
out exactly what is happening and how it could
be improved.
"Athene is proving to be our ideal capacity
planning tool. Without it we wouldn’t have
the relevant tools either to manage our own internal
systems or to be able to offer this new service
to the Health Authorities, which is essential
in this period of change and restructuring within
the NHS."
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