The hospital resellers helped to build

Macquarie University Hospital, Geoff Harder

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Macquarie University Hospital (MUH) cost around $250 million to build, is one of the Australia’s most advanced medical facilities and used a range of resellers to get the job done.

Systems integrator, 3D Networks, was awarded a contract worth almost $3m to set up a Cisco network infrastructure. Siemens reseller, Rauland, was also awarded a deal to provide 150 HiPath HiMed units, 180 bedside screens, 50 large screens for waiting areas and nurse call systems.

“Those were probably the two biggest resellers there,” MUH CIO, Geoff Harders, said. “Some of the Siemens security stuff was done by Chubb… another one of our partners had been Oriel Technologies, which helped us out with the various builds, setting up virtual machines and databases.”

“We’ve been using VARs like Insight and other companies like that… the other major company has been HP in relation to storage.”

Harders said he was happy to use resellers and go through the channel – as long as they added value to the sale and there was a strong direct relationship between his hospital and the vendors themselves.

“We have direct relationships with HP, Cisco and Microsoft as well,” he said. “But we do use reseller partners to acquire that equipment and they add value in the process.”

While Harders said he’d consider resellers in the future, most of the equipment he needed had already been purchased. He added that the healthcare market in Australia was not big enough to sustain many more partners.

“There are not that many hospitals and there’s a variety of people trying to do this stuff,” he said. “In some ways and in some areas the more players that are in the market, the more diluted it becomes and the harder it is for them to make a profit.”

The CIO said while there were some delays in the hospital’s IT installations, most of it was due to vendor equipment shortages rather than resellers. But he added the shift by 3D Networks from Nortel equipment to Cisco following the vendor’s bankruptcy had not increased the cost of the solution.

“It slowed [the build and increased the cost] somewhat,” he said. “In some areas the equipment was a little more expensive and in some areas it was a little less. It all balanced out to be roughly the same.”

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