Macquarie Hosting partnership
will also support Healthways’ Asia Pacific Expansion
Sydney – 28 July 2009 -
Macquarie
Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom, has announced it
has signed a three year $1 million deal with Healthways
Australia Pty Ltd, part of Healthways Inc, a leading
international provider of population health support services,
including wellness, prevention and chronic disease management
services. Under the deal Macquarie Hosting will host
Healthways Australia’s internet-based suite of health and
wellness resources designed to help Australians measure their
current health, assess risks and prevent future health problems.
Macquarie Hosting was awarded the contract following a
competitive tender. For Macquarie Hosting, the deal
reflects its strategic approach to partner with health
organisations with a strong eHealth focus. This is a sector the
business expects will be a significant growth area for the next
12 to 18 months as the Government invests substantial funds in
overhauling and improving the national health system. Macquarie Hosting also provides
dedicated server hosting and data services for some of the
countries leading health organisations including the National
E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA), Smart Health, Map of
Medicine, OZDoc’s Online, NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre Sydney
University, Medicines Australia, Alphapharm, Novartis, Merk
Sharp and Dome, ResMed, and Catholic Health Care. The
Healthways service will focus on prevention, education and
support for common health needs, providing Australians with
access to the information they need to proactively manage their
health and improve their quality of life. Healthways
Australia announced its entry into the Australian market with a
partnership with Australia's third largest health insurer HCF in
November 2008; representing an investment of more than $100
million over five years by HCF. “Australia has one of
the best healthcare systems in the world. However if we are to
continue improving the system and better manage the tsunami of
chronic diseases coming through, then broad access to personal
quality online health resources and large scale telephonic
support are critical” said Craig Bosworth, Healthways’ Director
of Strategy. “The launch of these services marks a
significant investment for our private health insurance partner
HCF, and a landmark for the Australian health system. We
therefore needed to partner with a provider that could guarantee
us the secure and reliable back-end required to support it.
“Australians seek security from their health care and
we were seeking security for their health information. Macquarie
Hosting with its proven experience working with online
businesses and Government departments gave us the confidence we
needed to scale easily to support future expansion of the
service.” Bosworth said. All online resources and
mission critical applications including customised health
information, health risk assessments, health coaching and
on-line personal health records will be hosted on Macquarie
Hosting servers in its ISO 27001 certified and PCI compliant
data center in Sydney, the Intellicentre. Macquarie
Hosting will provide the managed dedicated
server hosting services required to support rapid growth of
the Healthways service in Australia as well as expansion into
the Asia Pacific region. The high-availability,
fully-managed hosting solution is built on multiple dedicated
Dell servers and is optimised for rapid scalability and
increased bandwidth. Specialist redundant SSL load-balancing
allows Macquarie Hosting to manage peaks in traffic to the
online resource while dedicated firewalls provide added security
and redundancy. Macquarie Hosting will also provide a
dedicated tape back-up library and tape drives as well as high
availability core network and redundant data links to ensure
24/7 availability of the service for Healthways Australia
subscribers and HCF members. The Macquarie
Hosting deal also includes all data and voice services for
Healthways Australia’s Care Enhancement Centre located in North
Ryde. This provides the organisation with a single SLA and
guaranteed service level for its network, communications and
hosting requirements. “We are seeing unprecedented
activity in the eHealth industry as the Government and private
sector inject significant funds to support the development of
services designed to alleviate pressure on our health system,”
said Aidan Tudehope, Managing Director, Hosting, Macquarie
Telecom. “In line with this, we are seeing a sharp
spike in the number of eHealth organisations selectively
outsourcing their hosting requirements to reduce costs and the
administrative burden associated with managing their own data
center and mission critical applications.”
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