Referencia Laboratorio Clínico improves scalability, capacity and leadership with the implementation of Nutanix

The leading clinical laboratory service in the Dominican Republic increases reliability, accuracy, and speed of its results for the benefit of patients, thanks to modern and advanced technological capabilities

Overview

Referencia Laboratorio Clínico is a consolidated healthcare company in the Dominican Republic whose mission is to provide clinical laboratory services of the highest quality to its patients and corporate clients.

As part of its strong commitment to quality and innovation, in 2016, Referencia Laboratorio Clínico's IT team undertook the search for a new technology partner after facing availability and scalability limitations in their virtual platforms. They were looking for a modern and innovative solution that would allow them to achieve the highest level of security, stability, and speed in the delivery of their results.

After a rigorous consultation process among potential suppliers, they discovered that Nutanix was the fullest solution for their needs. Through Nutanix with Lenovo running at AHV, Referencia Laboratorio Clínico obtained a revolutionary transformation of its technological infrastructure, migrating to a highly stable, user-friendly, agile, and secure platform, all of which translated into a better service to patients and corporate clients.

Challenge

With approximately 2,250 employees and almost 65 branches across the country, Referencia is a leader in the clinical laboratory sector in the Dominican Republic. 

The company is certified and accredited under the most relevant norms and standards for clinical laboratories worldwide, including CAP accreditation from the College of American Pathologists and AABB Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies certification for Blood Banking and Human DNA Identification Testing. 

In addition to the Dominican Republic, Referencia Laboratorio also provides outsourced processing of lab samples for other countries in Central America and the Caribbean as authorized by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

As part of its commitment to quality, Referencia Laboratorio Clínico is committed to making its services easily accessible to patients throughout the Dominican Republic. To achieve this purpose, in addition to expanding the number of branches, the company has been consistent in increasing the use of technological tools and the digitalization of its processes.

"Referencia Laboratorio is a company of innovation and technology that has all the digital tools necessary to offer specialized clinical analysis to medical professionals who need to obtain accurate and timely diagnoses for patients,” shares Espinosa.

As part of their innovation efforts, Referencia Laboratorio Clínico began searching for a new technology partner in 2016 after moving to a much larger and modern processing plant. They needed a stable, scalable end-to-end technology solution with the advantages of the public cloud that could provide technical support to their point-of-sale software, the client’s management services, database solution, data analytics, hybrid Office 365 solution, and analytics services. 

“We needed more equipment, more complex processes, and more electrical power. We need to grow more than 100%,” explains Alejandro Espinosa, IT Manager, who oversees everything related to technology, including infrastructure, development, networks, communication, and cyber security.

Being a part of the health sector meant that Referencia Laboratorio Clínico faced unique challenges when it came to choosing a technology partner that would fully and comprehensively meet its needs. “We need to deliver our lab results accurately and on time because patient results are imperative for physicians to make decisions. Our results are critical, so they need to be precise, accurate, and fast,” details Espinosa.

In addition to supporting patients, Referencia also serves a broad portfolio of almost 400 laboratories throughout the country that send samples to them for processing. “These laboratories also deserve a short response time because many of them are integrated into health centers where the patient is admitted. We also provide services to companies for their new staff, which requires efficient response times as well,” explains Espinosa. 

With all that at stake in terms of economic investment and especially considering the value of the patients' lives that depend on it, Espinosa and his team were very clear that they had to find a technology partner that could meet all these specialized needs already outlined.

Solution

Referencia Laboratorio Clínico had a traditional cluster with VMware, another with Hyper-V, and additional physical equipment that required large spaces, higher power consumption, and more powerful cooling systems to mitigate the high heat emission of multiple UPS units and bulky processing equipment. Given this diagnosis, there was an urgent need for a comprehensive and innovative solution that would optimize the environment, simplify operations, reduce costs and make the services offered to patients and business clients more agile and accessible.

Espinosa and his team met with other potential technology partners, but after one of their suppliers introduced them to Nutanix, they knew immediately that it was the solution they were looking for. One of the deciding factors that led them to choose this solution with absolute certainty was the advanced and versatile hypervisor that would allow them to consolidate the entire technology load on Nutanix, providing a much simpler, accessible, and stable environment.

“We chose Nutanix because we saw that hyperconvergence was the best solution at the time. What the other brands offered us did not compare to everything Nutanix gave us. In the case of convergence and supervisor and all that, we already had VMware as the main supervisor, but when we saw the Nutanix solution and how it worked, we were convinced that it was better,” says Espinosa.

Two other powerful advantages convinced the Referencia Laboratorio Clínico team to opt for Nutanix: first, the possibility of choosing the hypervisor and acquiring a solution such as AHV, which is as good or better than VMware, but with a better price; and second, the opportunity to acquire an all-in-one solution, which did not require adding any additional software.

After one week of implementation and another week of training, Referencia Laboratorio started working with Nutanix in 2016 as the first implementation of Nutanix with Lenovo in the Dominican Republic. The team began seeing results in the first three months after Nutanix implementation at the operational level, and the payback on the last Nutanix investment took only 30 days.

Customer Outcome

Referencia Laboratorio implemented two clusters with Nutanix, a cluster on the production site (headquarters) and a cluster on the alternate site to allow for high availability. By utilizing two different sites, they are equipped with a contingency environment and disaster recovery solutions that ensure little to no downtime for users. 

As a part of the health industry, the high availability Nutanix offers has been extremely important for Referencia Laboratorio as they work to provide timely, reliable, and efficient lab results to all of their patients.

“We have never had an outage. We’re always online, we're always up to speed,” says Espinosa. “During the pandemic when the switchboard went down, we went to our alternate site that is active with Nutanix. We were able to answer all the calls in that period without the user ever knowing there was a change. Thanks to the Nutanix platform, recovery can be done in real time and online without having to shut down,” says Espinosa. 

The fact that Referencia Laboratorio has never experienced a system downtime with Nutanix is vital because it ensures continuity of operations and response times for both its patients and its business customers. Along with high availability, the Nutanix platform also provides ease of scalability, which is highly valuable for an ever-dynamic and continuously growing company. 

“Nutanix allows us to overcome challenges and accomplish new things, so that we’re constantly innovating. We have new departments that we have been able to provide the support and technological facilities that they require, such as molecular biology, affiliation, and other departments that are new to the laboratory. Thanks to Nutanix and its scalability, we have been able to do this and continue working without any inconvenience,” details Espinosa. 

In addition to the high availability and scalability that enhance the company's leadership in the Dominican healthcare market, the alliance that Referencia Laboratorio Clínico established with Nutanix has also helped to optimize its internal processes and streamline communications between laboratory personnel.

“There are phlebotomy areas where the sample is taken from the patient, and there is a full tracking of that sample. Thanks to Nutanix, the monitoring of the sample is faster and more agile, and we know about the entire trajectory of the sample. We have complete visibility from when the patient takes the sample until the result arrives, which has allowed us to speed up and increase the agility of all areas throughout the process,” explains Espinosa.  

The Referencia Laboratorio team also recognizes the ease and flexibility of managing the Nutanix platform. They can access the console from anywhere whether that be home or the office and on any device whether that be a tablet or PC. The ease of administration and having consolidated all their platforms into one running AHV is a valuable benefit of Nutanix.

In a global environment marked by the crisis and increasing cost of energy resources, Nutanix represents a friendly and relevant solution by demanding less energy, optimizing spaces, and emitting less heat into the environment. Its successful implementation reaffirms Referencia Laboratorio Clínico as an environmentally responsible company that opts for clean energies and technologies, betting on energy saving and heat emission reduction.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Nutanix further proved the value of their partnership with Referencia Laboratorio Clínico by helping them continue to serve patients despite stay-at-home orders. 

“During the pandemic, we had to change how we served patients. We had to offer many remote services and prepare the platform, so that our team could work from home. It was a challenge that we took on, and thanks to Nutanix, we accomplished more than expected,” shares Espinosa.

Before the pandemic, Referencia Laboratorio had a call center of 12 users that Nutanix helped them suddenly increase to 200 users when the pandemic ramped up—increasing call center resources by 200%. Their billing program also had to be increased by more than 80% in relation to what they counted with. There were also several new applications added to respond to the pandemic as well as a large number of additional services such as WhatsApp Messenger. 

The ability for growth that Nutanix offered during the pandemic was vital because Referencia Laboratorio played a crucial national role. They were the only lab in the country that was able to give daily reports on active cases and how the pandemic was evolving to the Ministry of Health. “Every day, we had to send reports and statistics at a specific time. We were the only laboratory in the country that was able to provide all the statistics of the pandemic,” explains Espinosa.

The impact of the technical support offered by Nutanix extends to all operating units, such as the case of Referencia Imágenes Diagnósticas, the sister company of Referencia Laboratorio Clínico, which is the most advanced diagnostic imaging center in the Dominican Republic. 

“Referencia Laboratorio has been the pilot that has allowed other areas of our business to develop in a more agile way, as is the case of Referencia Imágenes utilizing Nutanix,” explains Espinosa. “The fact that Referencia Imágenes Diagnósticas’s images are received digitally before another medical specialist reads a report is time gained. With the patient, time is dominant. Quality, time, and innovation are the three most valued factors in the health sector.”

Next Steps

Currently possessing ten Nutanix nodes in total with one in the primary site and nine in the alternate site, Referencia Laboratorio plans to grow in applications and expand their Nutanix infrastructure in the future. 

By adding more nodes, the company will be able to increase the capacity of both clusters as more resources are needed. Additionally, Referencia Laboratorio plans to expand their use of other Nutanix applications such as Frame and File solutions to leverage the full benefits of their partnership. 

Referencia Laboratorio also aims to expand their remote lab service offerings with the help of Nutanix. The goal of the project is to allow patients to take certain tests at home and see results on a platform without visiting a physical location.  

“We understand that there is much ahead and that technological resources in the health sector are a significant challenge, but Nutanix has been able to set a competitive advantage for us in the industry,” says Espinosa.

“We are pleased to hear from customers about their experience with Nutanix, but we’re especially proud of our success stories in the healthcare industry. We are proud to have been able to support Referencia Laboratorio during years as challenging as these last ones and that they were one of the first customers in the region,” concludes Pedro Sandalis, Regional Manager of Nutanix.