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Freiburg University Medical Center puts second computer center into operation

Laboratory results, CT and MRI scans, therapy documentation: patient data at a hospital is highly sensitive. It must be protected in the best possible way - and be available around the clock for ongoing treatments. To further expand data protection and data security and increase protection against outages, the University Medical Center Freiburg put a second data center into operation in January 2019. This means that all care-critical data is stored in parallel at two independent data center locations operated by the University Medical Center Freiburg. In addition to a high level of internal security, both data centers have an independent supply of electricity and emergency power, ensuring secure and largely uninterrupted hospital operations even in the event of a complete failure of one site.

"Digitalization and networking have become key drivers of innovation in healthcare. With optimized data management, we are pleased to be able to make full use of developments in information technology for the care of our patients," says Prof. Dr. Frederik Wenz, Chief Medical Director of the University Medical Center Freiburg.

In order to create the optimal technological and business conditions, the University Medical Center Freiburg uses the newly created data center infrastructure of badenIT. badenIT ensures the operation of the infrastructure - including buildings, electricity, air conditioning, independent power supply and the emergency power system. However, the operation of the servers, data storage and network components is entirely in the hands of the University Medical Center Freiburg.

"Clinical data centers are subject to particularly strict requirements under the IT Security Act, which we meet perfectly with our two data centers," says Dr. Michael Kraus, Head of the Clinical Data Center at the Freiburg University Medical Center. The badenIT data center has been divided into individual, separate areas, known as suites. "The suite that the Freiburg University Medical Center has rented is only accessible to employees of the hospital data center," explains Peter Lais, Managing Director of badenIT.

Technical facts about the new data center:

• The Freiburg University Medical Center's suite in the badenIT data center is 75 square meters in size.
• The servers are connected to the network of Freiburg University Hospital via two independent fiber optic lines. This exclusive fiber optic network ("dark fiber") is used exclusively by the University Medical Center Freiburg. This ensures high transfer rates, encrypted data transfer and direct control over the data flow.
• The suite consists of 16 server towers, so-called racks, each comprising 47 height units and accommodating five kilowatts of electrical power. The racks are supplied with power via an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). A further eight racks can be added. Storage systems for almost one petabyte of data are accommodated.
• The data center has a high-availability power connection that is connected to the badenova medium-voltage grid via two separate substations. A stationary emergency power system is available as an additional fallback level.
• The data center is operated with green electricity from 100 percent renewable sources.

Captions:
Image 1: Optimally secured: The data center suite of the University Medical Center Freiburg.
Image 2: Opening the new data center of the University Medical Center Freiburg: Dr. Michael Kraus, Head of the Hospital Data Center at the University Medical Center Freiburg, Peter Lais, Managing Director of badenIT, and Prof. Dr. Frederik Wenz, Chief Medical Director of the University Medical Center Freiburg (from left to right) 
Image rights: University Medical Center Freiburg

Contact: 
Dr. Michael Kraus 
Head of Clinical Computing Center 
University Medical Center Freiburg 
Phone: 0761 270-22050 
michael.kraus@uniklinik-freiburg.de