Many healthcare organisations have struggled to roll out VDI successfully, discovering off-the-shelf platforms weren’t designed for medical professionals to work securely with graphics-heavy applications and HD clinical images.

Understanding common VDI obstacles and how to overcome them is a great place to start for long-term hybrid working success in healthcare.

What Is VDI?

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a cloud-based technology that uses virtual machines to provider and manage virtual desktops.

These virtual desktops can be accessed anywhere at any time, making VDI solutions optimal for remote working.

Common VDI Pitfalls

• One size fits all assumptions.

It’s a common mistake to assume all staff will have the same needs and interact similarly with VDI – they don’t and won’t.

Choose a provider that differentiates between VDI profiles for workers with basic IT needs and power users working with graphics-heavy clinical imaging applications and offers scalable pricing and burst capability.

• Poor performance

Substandard user experience (UX) derails many a VDI project. Common causes are inadequate compute or storage resources, difficulties sharing files, latency, and client device issues.

Look for a purpose-built VDI solution that combines leading-edge technologies, proven in healthcare settings to give remote users speedy access to high quality clinical images and essential apps and tools away from the workplace.

• Security risks

In healthcare, deploying VDI workloads securely and compliantly is vital. Home devices are susceptible to a wide range of security issues. IT teams need the freedom to choose which apps and workloads should reside in the cloud and on-premises.

Look for a provider who understands how to meet healthcare compliance and security requirements and offers VDI consumption in the cloud, on-premises or using a hybrid model in a single seamless solution.

• In-house resources

Be honest about your team’s skills and existing infrastructure when choosing a deployment model. The challenges of dealing with legacy systems, cloud deployment and app optimisation shouldn’t be underestimated.

A specialist provider can deliver gains including enhanced data security, built-in disaster recovery, smaller storage footprint, faster IT provisioning and centrally managed updates. Scrutinise their technical credentials and be confident they can leverage the latest technologies and provide ongoing management, optimisation and 24/7 support.

• Flawed financials

VDI providers’ money-saving promises usually to turn out to be empty. Before and after IT infrastructure costs often remain flat. Instead, build support based on a specialist provider’s ability to unlock much greater value for around the same outlay.

When evaluating DIY and fully managed VDI solutions, calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) over 5 years. In-house expenses should include PC hardware refreshes, virtualisation software and additional GPU, together with costs for system administrator salaries, power, rack space, out-of-hours staffing and training costs.

• Underestimating benefits

A business case based purely on financial costs ignores a host of wider benefits. The real return on investment (ROI) from hybrid working comes from optimised multidisciplinary teams and more agile processes.

Don’t underestimate the value of enabling teams to work effectively from anywhere, freed from workplaces and shifts. Successful VDI deployment expedites diagnoses, improves patient outcomes, and enables organisations to attract and retain the best talent.