John T. Mather Memorial Hospital selects CA`s Unicenter

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that John T. Mather Memorial Hospital, a 248-bed community hospital in central Long Island known for its cutting-edge care, has chosen CA`s acclaimed Unicenter infrastructure management solution to optimize the security and reliability of its fast-growing network.

By using Unicenter to manage its 350 PCs and 23 UNIX, Novell and Windows NT servers, Mather Hospital will dramatically improve the performance of its enterprise network, which has tripled in size since 1998. The scalable CA solution will also support Mather`s deployment of a sophisticated medical imaging system projected to expand network use by another 40 percent. The graphical views of all network hardware and software that Unicenter provides will further enable Mather to proactively troubleshoot and repair network problems - saving the hospital significant IT costs.

"The integrated capabilities of Unicenter will reduce our need for IT support and speed the flow of critical information to every hospital department, from diagnostics and surgery to payroll and billing," said Vincent McGee, Operations Manager, Information Services for Mather Hospital. "By enhancing our network efficiency, we`re enabling our medical teams and support staff to serve our patients and their families much more effectively."

Mather chose Unicenter over several vendors` solutions, because of its superior ease-of-use, flexibility, and scalability. With only one network administrator and two technicians, Mather will rely on Unicenter to keep pace with its explosive network growth without the need to add more staff.

Unicenter Asset Management will provide Mather`s IT personnel with a daily inventory of each PC`s software, memory, and available drive space, and allow them to rapidly configure software and resolve most user problems without leaving their desks. Previously, IT personnel were forced to walk to each hospital computer to examine and repair it - a costly, reactive, and time-consuming process. Unicenter Asset Management will prioritize necessary maintenance proactively, flagging problem computers, full disk drives, or unauthorized software for immediate attention. It will also ensure Mather`s compliance with patient confidentiality laws, enabling IT staff to detect and remove devices added to the network without proper authorization.

Unicenter Network and Systems Management will further enhance the hospital`s ability to monitor and predict network traffic via an intuitive graphical interface that provides IT staff with a complete, easy-to-understand view of the entire network.

"The Unicenter solution will eliminate hours of manual diagnostics and allow us to resolve many problems remotely, freeing us to focus on more strategic tasks," McGee said. "We`ll also be able to identify patterns of applications use so we can avoid network bottlenecks, rapidly allocate hardware and software only where they`re needed, and project future expenses more accurately."

"Above all," McGee concluded, "Unicenter will empower our IT department to deliver vital information to doctors, nurses, administrators, and other care providers faster and more efficiently - thereby enabling Mather Hospital to direct our human and financial resources to what we do best: patient care."