I'm interested in learning more about your virtual server. So many organizations are spending so much $ on servers, do you think it is a good business model that would work for hospitals to have virtual servers? How did you organization choose to move toward a virtual system?

Virtual technology is actually the way to go. You do save a lot of money as there is no need to purchase physical hardware. More than likely you will need to purchase a physical server for the database but any other server can be virtualized. We have multiple systems virtualized EKG, ED physician and nursing documentation, actually any healthcare system these days can be virtualized. Working with the vendor and your IT technical staff a plan to virtualize your systems can be formulated. You also need to ensure your technical staff are trained on the technology to understand the configuration and build of the virtual environment.

Disaster recovery can be planned for in multiple ways. You can implement a backup tape environment to copy files daily and store these tapes offsite. The continuous data feed is a good idea, however may be expensive.