Helse Nord IKT – New regional data center in the North of Norway

Helse Nord is one of four regional health authorities in Norway in charge of public health services. Helse Nord ensures that the population in the northernmost counties has a professional health – and specialist care service. The authority covers a wide geographical area reaching from Nordland to Troms and Finnmark all the way to Svalbard.

A few years ago, Helse Nord started the process of centralising all IT – operations to create one professional function covering all hospitals and health institutions of the region. Following this, Helse Nord IKT was established in 2006 with the purpose of centralizing all IT – management, operations and development servicing 18 0000 employees daily.

After a while it became necessary to coordinate all IT-infrastructure in a completely new data center. Coromatic was given the challenge to build the new data center.

Specific demands

The specific demands and goals were clear. The risk of disturbances needed to be minimal at the same time as the whole project had to be delivered according to agreed terms.

In addition to that, it was necessary to reduce long-term operational costs. In fact, the long-term aspects were really important to secure scalability in addition to energy efficiency.

— The goal of the project was to build a data center which will help us secure the quality of our IT – services, and handle our increasing need to secure the flow of information in and between the hospitals of the region, says Eva K. Lyshoel, Project Leader for the data center at the time.

An important issue was to secure that all technical elements in the data center fulfilled the same security demands.

Important analysis

Like all data center projects the starting point was to optimize the design by securing the right dimensions of data communication infrastructure, cooling and electro installations. These elements are critical for all hospital operations.

After the first phase of analysis the construction of the building took place followed by the instalment of all technical solutions in the new data center. This demands a process based on experience, at the same time as each IT – environment is unique and requires customized solutions.

Results

The data center, which opened March 2016, has now been opeational for a while

— We are very happy with the delivery from Coromatic, says Fred Lia, Technical Manager Data center in Helse Nord IKT HF. We feel confident about having achieved an effective, scalable and secure solution that will last the next fifteen years. This is our goal.

The data center is also capable of energy recovery for UNN (University Hospital of North Norway) to utilize waste heat.