MediKredit Integrated Healthcare Solutions offers eight times the processing power with Stratus upgrade

MediKredit Integrated Healthcare Solutions, a business to business e-commerce technology company in the healthcare industry, today announced that it is upgrading its current IT systems. Based on Stratus Computer Systems 24 X 7 technology, the new enhancements will allow eight times the processing power of the previous Stratus model, enabling the organisation to process larger volumes and more complex healthcare claims with greater efficiency.

"In excess of 3.2 million lives are managed by MediKredit, which translates to approximately 50 per cent of the private healthcare market," says Alouise Adlam, Group IT director at MediKredit. "MediKredit does not only act as an electronic data carrier, but rather adds value to individual claims by verifying and processing the information that comes through on an online real-time basis. In order to process claims in real-time, we require an IT infrastructure that is both reliable and powerful, not to mention continuously available."

The local company first implemented a Stratus Continuum 610 server in 1995. "At that stage, we were processing approximately 4000 claims per day," Adlam explains. "Yet as our business expanded, the claims have dramatically increased to our present volume of approximately 100 000 items per day. There is now a need to upgrade our Stratus Continuum servers to ensure that our service remains efficient and of the quality and standard that our customers are familiar with."

"The upgrade involves the PA-8500 chip set, which will make it one of the most powerful Stratus servers in South Africa at the moment," comments Nick Cheetham, managing director of Stratus South Africa and United Kingdom. "The upgrade will see the company significantly increasing the amount of transactions that it is currently processing. Currently, MediKredit's speed of processing incoming transactions is extremely fast, taking only eleven seconds from end to end, utilising its reliable Healthnet/ ST front-end and Saponet communications network. The power that the new Stratus technology will be providing will allow MediKredit to dramatically increase their transactions without this response time decreasing."

Adlam goes on to say that in a dynamic industry such as healthcare, it is imperative that systems are continuously available. "We operate on a 24 X 7 basis - our business process never shuts down as medical claims require attention as soon as they are received. We have been able to achieve this through our relationship with Stratus. In the last two years, we have only experienced five minutes of machine downtime - and this was planned!"

MediKredit has also written its own software and emphasis is continually placed on the quality of software development. "Stratus has created an environment that allows us to remain focused on our software testing and quality. The Stratus hardware requires minimal operational maintenance: each part in the server is duplicated so if one part fails, the sister component takes over. The servers even self-diagnose the problem and automatically order the necessary parts. This low maintenance allows us to focus on our business and customers, rather than worry about our IT systems."

MediKredit is operating full electronic communication systems, which require a continuously available system in the back-end environment. The company will be implementing a number of IT upgrades in the future. "The commitment and support that we have received from the local Stratus representatives, coupled with the fact that the Stratus open platform allows true scalability, means that we will look again to Stratus in the near future to help us continually improve our IT systems."