Eastern Health moves to IGEL OS for virtual desktops

Melbourne health services provider Eastern Health has moved to a virtual desktop environment provided by German vendor IGEL, for its organisational clinical endpoint solution.

The migration has taken several years to accomplish.

Eastern Health, which has a workforce of over 11,000 staff, decided to shift to the IGEL operating system in 2016, migrating away from what the organisation said were out-of-date desktop devices, running Microsoft Windows XP and 7, which connected to a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop environment in its own data centre.

"Endpoint performance was a concern given it affects staff efficiency, productivity and security," Yasitha Wijesinghe, ICT systems engineer at Eastern Health, said.

"The old desktops were slow to boot up, logging in and out took time and the connections to Citrix were slow. This drove our decision to change," Wijesinghe added.

Wijesinghe said IGEL's Universal Management Suite made it easy and fast to deploy updates for a geographically dispersed organisation like Eastern Health, which covers 2816 kilometres with eight main campus sites.

“Updating and maintaining Microsoft Windows endpoints with required applications just for the purpose of connecting to a Citrix environment was unnecessary and time consuming. It was very clunky and took a lot of effort to run," she said.

Prior to standardising on IGEL OS, Eastern Health ran a proof of concept with a test licenses for the operating system.

The health services provider also sought input from  Imprivata on whether IGEL OS integrated effectively with the identity provider's secure single sign-on (SSO) access management system, which was a key clinical and operational requirement.

Eastern Health upgraded computers to IGEL OS at Angliss in Upper Ferntree Gully in two weeks, and following that, most desktops across its campuses were converted.

Now, Eastern Health staff connect to Citrix daily using IGEL OS, to access Microsoft Office and Oracle's Cerner Electronic Health Records system, and other applications.

The healthcare organisation said it has around 2500 Citrix licenses.

IGEL terms its software as an "edge operating system" that is optimised for secure and scalable delivery of virtual desktops and cloud workspaces.

The Linux based OS temporarily or permanently replaces an operating system, and requires a 64-bit, x86-compatible processor, at least 2 GB RAM, 2 GB flash-/HDD storage and USB
boot support. 

The company said most PCs made in the last six years will work with IGEL OS, which is currently in version 11.

Last year, IGEL decided to exit its thin client hardware business, to focus only on its Linux based OS.

A spokesperson for IGEL said the company only sells via partners.

In Eastern Health's case, IT services giant NTT provided the licenses, the spokesperson said.

Insentra Group was appointed the master distributor for IGEL in 2020, for Australia and New Zealand.