Case Study: NEC

NEC Australia has joined forces with The Kids Research Institute Australia to ensure a state-of-the-art ICT system is in place at the new Perth Children’s Hospital when the Institute relocates.

Steven Figliomeni, Information Systems Lead at the Institute, said the The Kids’ IT team and NEC had been working closely to identify and plan out the functional requirements for the new building network.

“Our new ICT network will be a great improvement on what exists in our current building,” he said. “Given how important technology is to effective research, we believe the final outcome will be an important enabler to the critical research of the Institute, thereby ensuring that the Institute is able to make a difference to the health and wellbeing of children.”

NEC, which has been one of The Kids Research Institute Australia’s technology Focus Partners since 2015, provides a wide portfolio of ICT products and services, such as consultation, procurement of equipment and software, solutions design and implementation, development and general guidance and direction.

NEC’s staff have been praised for their top-notch customer service and ability to engage and communicate effectively with Institute staff.

NEC Solution Delivery Manager Justyn John said children would benefit from enabling a collaborative research environment for hospital, university and Institute researchers to deliver the best outcomes for children and families in Western Australia and beyond.

“As a trusted advisor to the Institute, NEC has welcomed the opportunity to work alongside The Kids over the past two years to develop a thorough understanding of the Institute’s IT technology requirements and to support its strategic objective of becoming the research institute of the future,” Mr John said.

“Through a process of extensive consultation and interviews, NEC has gained a genuine appreciation of the varied roles that Institute researchers and support staff play, and the different hats they wear in fulfilling their important roles. We have gathered detailed requirements from a large range of stakeholders across the Institute and have been involved in a number of significant projects.”

Emma Gillespie, Procurement and Contract Manager with The Kids, said the Institute’s new ICT network at Perth Children’s Hospital would support the delivery of even greater research outcomes and facilitate wider research collaboration.

“NEC has worked very well alongside our in-house IT team to ensure that researchers have access to the technical services and support required to effectively conduct their research,” she said.

“NEC were originally selected as a technology Focus Partner due to their reputation as a market leader, the significant value of their offer and their proven ability to tap into a wide range of technical resources and expertise locally and internationally. They have demonstrated a strong alignment to the Institute’s vision and the critical importance of our research.

“NEC are committed to assisting the Institute to deliver optimal research outcomes and this has been demonstrated by the number of value-adding projects that they have been directly involved in over the past two years – both with our IT team and with various research projects.”

One important IT project that supported the Institute’s research involved a database for the Children’s Diabetes Centre, to assist in the storage and cleaning of data from a study to predict and prevent hypoglycaemic episodes in children with type 1 diabetes using new insulin pump technology. “NEC were brought in because of the large size of the data to be complied - in excess of 14 million records whose size made it difficult to store and view,” Clinical Data Manager Leah Laurenson said. “Having NEC involved and their collaboration with statisticians meant that we were able to have the dataset ready for analysis and submit the results for publication on schedule. As a result of this experience, we asked NEC to set up a database for a new follow-up study.”

NEC was also involved in a project to create a web-based application for the PLAN (Pregnancy, Lifestyle, Activity and Nutrition) program, which aims to help pregnant women keep track of their weight gain and have a healthy pregnancy.

Paediatric consultant Associate Professor Rae-Chi Huang said the idea came out of a Code4Kids hackathon in 2015, which NEC developers then finessed.

Under trial in a two-year pilot study at the Joondalup Health Campus and St John of God Subiaco Hospital, the PLAN app tracks weight, shares nutrition, exercise, stress management and goal-setting advice, and provides reminders and feedback to participants.

NEC also assisted the Institute with planning and delivery of a strategy to replace a number of ageing servers and data storage devices, and to ensure the seamless migration of critical research data from old to new IT infrastructure.

“Some of our IT equipment was struggling to keep up with the demand and the growth of the Institute,” Mr Figliomeni said. “Because of this, The Kids engaged NEC to help procure and deploy the best equipment moving forward. The project was completed successfully with minimum downtime and no loss of vital research data in the transition process.”

The Institute’s strategic partnership with NEC is seen as critical to its ongoing success. “We believe NEC is fully aligned with what the Institute is trying to achieve in regards to translatable research which makes a difference to the health and wellbeing of children,” Mr Figliomeni said. “NEC has demonstrated that it is prepared to act as a trusted advisor to the Institute and to provide the best technical expertise and resources available to deliver on our strategic ICT objectives.”