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New Student Health and Counseling System

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Student Health

In February, UCOP mandated that all UCs move student health operations to a common EMR (Electronic Medical Records) system.  UCI was using a system call “Medicat” for the Student Health Center and a product called “Titanium” for the Counseling Center.  The new system UCOP selected was “Point and Click” (PnC).

UCI was one of four campuses that were not currently using PnC.  The time line set by the Regents and UCOP was aggressive.  They wanted the conversion completed by August.

Combining both independent programs into one caused several issues with privacy and security.  Technical staff had to learn PnC in a hurry.  New virtual hardware was prepared and site visits and evaluations of the UCI environment were conducted.   A huge amount of collaboration was needed with the vendor.  A lot of the research and testing took place after hours and on weekends so that it did not disrupt normal business operations of the centers.

With support and assistance from staff and leadership within Student Health and the Counseling Center, the challenge to make this high-visibility conversion was met.  On August 14th the Counseling Center was migrated to the new system successfully.  Technical issues with the Medicat database caused delays for migrating the Student Health Center, but it finally took place on September 10th.  During this conversion process OIT staff continued to provide a high level of service to the other departments within Wellness, Health and Counseling Services as well as supporting the existing EMR system.

PnC is now in production at the Student Health Center and the Counseling Center.

Mainframe Migrated to UCOP

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Mainframe

An intensive six-month migration process was recently completed when operations of UCI’s administrative IBM mainframe were transferred to a UCOP-managed system in Oakland.

UCI has been using an IBM mainframe for administrative processing since 1990, and the current system received its most recent hardware upgrade in 2005.  Rather than continue to invest in hardware upgrades, maintenance costs, and related expenses, it was decided the campus would receive better value by hosting its administrative applications on UCOP’s system.

The UCOP system now hosts UCI’s General Ledger, Transfer of Expense (TOE), Purchasing/Accounting Link (PAL), and other applications.  Some additional services are run on Oakland’s system, while the user interface is still provided by OIT locally, such as the Electronic Data Library (EDL) and the Permanent Budget System.

OIT remains responsible for all application administration, programming, report distribution, and printing, so UCI faculty and staff continue to be supported locally as before.

UCI is one of the first UC campuses to achieve cost-savings through the use of a “mainframe logical partition” at UCOP, along with UCSB.  Other campuses, including UCR, are in the process of a similar migration.  Cost savings are achieved through economies of scale in maintenance and software licensing.  UCI expects to save over $150,000 in FY10/11 as a result of the migration.

UCI Hosts IT Guidance Committee Meeting

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On Tuesday, May 2, 2006, UCI hosted the second meeting of the systemwide UC Information Technology Guidance Committee (ITGC).

The ITGC was established by the UC Office of the President to undertake an 18-month process of consulting with stakeholders at all the UC campuses. Its goal is to guide future UC investment in information technology to promote an effective academic information environment.

The formation of this committee recognizes the increasingly important role that information technology will play in sustaining the enhancing the University’s academic quality and competitiveness and in ensuring essential business effectiveness and efficiencies.

The meeting, held at Langston Library, consisted of three sessions: Infrastructure/Administration, Instructional and Student Computing, and Research Computing. A wide range of faculty and staff from throughout the campus attended. More information can be found at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/itgc/