A quick trip to hospital, with a glowing endorsement of the IGEL way!

Hospitals are always slightly unnerving places, so it is a nice surprise to see old acquaintances while journeying through the healthcare system.

My trip involved just a small elective procedure, so was not exactly life threatening, but with the thought of needles, monitors stuck to one’s torso, harsh artificial lights and, in true Monty Python-esque fashion, lots of “machines that go ‘ping!’, there’s still plenty to be mildly concerned about. Plus of course the fact it was 2pm, and I hadn’t eaten since my meagre piece of toast and black coffee at 6am…

As I lay on a gurney, wearing a paper hat and one of those gowns that for some reason leaves your backside exposed, I was wheeled into a waiting-room directly outside the operating theatre. Left to my own devices while the sound of clinicians and nurses prepping for the operation echoed from the room next door, I looked around.

To my immediate right, there was a monitor.

On that monitor was a very familiar logo, announcing to the world (well, to the poor fool on the operating gurney anyway) that this hospital’s end-points were part of an IGEL cloud-based operating solution.

Hooray! I was in safe hands…surrounded by old friends!

The logo also featured regular IGEL partners-in-crime Imprivata, which suggested that IGEL and Imprivata were working in tandem on a secure, single-sign-on (SSO) solution for accessing virtual endpoints.

The endpoint itself gave me slightly less confidence. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a very old Dell PC, still bearing a Windows Vista sticker, which suggests it was around a decade past its best. On the flip side, this highlights the fact that converting legacy devices to run on the IGEL OS really DOES extend their working life far beyond normal barriers. Which, in even more positive fashion, means I haven’t been lying in all those articles and blog posts I’ve written over the years. Still, it really did look very old and dusty…

Eventually, a friendly nurse came in, and asked me the same questions I’d already been asked several times. As she began to put monitors and sticky tape on my person, and tick charts and other official-looking stuff, I thought to ask her about the IGEL/Imprivata solution.

“Looks like a pretty cool endpoint solution you’ve got there,” said I.

“Er, what sorry?” Said she.

“Your computers. I do some work for the companies that make it easy to access your workflows, using that little wrist band on your arm,” I continued. (They had an access control solution attached to each terminal for faster, secure access).

“Oh that! Yes, it has really changed our lives, I love it. So much better than the last place I worked in,” she enthused.

A big tick for IGEL in the Australian healthcare system!

I began to give the nurse a quick rundown on what IGEL’s OS brings to the hospital as part of their technology stack. Indeed, I would have spoken more about the ways of IGEL and enhancing the user experience, but at this point another clinician came into the room and proceeded to render me unconscious, which I choose not to associate with my fascinating discourse on cloud computing in the healthcare system.

Anyway, it all ended up fine, a couple of days off my feet and I am back to writing content and managing media relations for the world’s most dynamic VDI company. I consider myself lucky to live in a country where healthcare is relatively affordable, efficient and very safe. I am equally lucky to have seen IGEL in action, at least for a very short while, and to have heard first-hand, from someone with no vested interest in the system other than their own personal experience, that it works bloody well for them!