About Dental Systems
Dental Systems Co., Ltd., located in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, was established in 2000 to provide medical insurance claim software for dental clinics and hospitals. The company's claim software is highly complex and incorporates data from patients’ dental and personal records, patient X-ray systems, appointment systems, and patient insurance data, and applies insurance system rule checks to provide accurate and comprehensive medical receipts for billing. For more information, please visit https://dentalsystems.jp.
The Challenge
Dental Systems' POWER4G software, which automates reception work at dental clinics, provided clinics and hospitals with equipment and systems leased from Dental Systems that were installed on-premises in clinics and hospitals using a client-server model. Customer’s end-users accessed the server using client machines located within clinics and hospitals.
The local installation of POWER4G facilitated integration with other systems and medical devices, but the deployment model was fraught with significant challenges for Dental Systems and its customers.
First, getting a new customer up and running could take months to plan and install a system. Second, product updates and upgrades had to be performed onsite at the hospital or dental clinic, inconveniencing POWER4G customers and their patients. Third, securing and backing up patient data was the responsibility of hospital or clinic staff members, so adherence to security and data backup best practices was inconsistent from customer to customer, which could cause significant customer service issues if patient data was lost or compromised.
In addition, Dental Systems saw a growing demand for software that allowed doctors to work remotely. Another new and interesting market for the company was clinics providing dental care services at nursing homes and other facilities. However, Dental Systems on-premises client-server product could not take advantage of either business opportunity.
Hideo Kurashima, Director, Dental Systems Corporation said, "Our on-premises software business was doing well, but due to changing times and customer expectations, we began planning how to provide cloud services."
The Solution
Delivering POWER4G from the cloud would eliminate inconveniencing customers with onsite software updates and upgrades, remove the distraction of equipment and systems leasing, allow Dental Systems to consistently apply security and data backup best practice for patient records, ensure business continuity, enable remote work, and allow the company to enter new markets.
The POWER4G team’s primary issue was how to convert their software to SaaS. Their initial conclusion was that they didn’t have the time or expertise to rewrite the software as a cloud-native app and continue running the business.
Said Yuichi Higuchi, IT Manager, DentalSystems, “The biggest challenge in moving from on-premises to the cloud was rewriting the software for the cloud. Such a major overhaul to provide POWER4G as a cloud service would be both time consuming and expensive.”
Mr. Kurashima takes up the story. “We saw that the primary change we needed to make to POWER4G was to upgrade database operations, which we could do in-house.”
Mr. Higuchi added, "Another big challenge was to enable information exchange with other systems and peripheral devices, as well as information exchange between the server and local devices. We also needed to make infrastructure changes—like application hosting and publishing, server and user seat management, and user account management—areas where we lacked experience. We started searching for an application hosting and publishing solution.”
Dental Systems turned to kitASP, a Japanese cloud technology provider and GO-Global partner, to find technology to convert POWER4G to SaaS. After evaluating multiple vendors, Dental Systems selected GO-Global.
Kurashima said, "We chose GO-Global because it was the easiest to implement, addressed key issues for us like data exchange, and utilized computing resources much more efficiently than our competitors. We also liked how easy it was to integrate POWER4G with other medical solutions like electronic medical records and medical image management systems.”
“We chose GO-Global because it was the easiest to implement, addressed key issues for us like data exchange, and utilized computing resources much more efficiently than our competitors. - Hideo Kurashima, Director, Dental Systems Corporation
Results
Working with kitASP, Dental Systems began a proof of concept in January 2018, deployed a prototype to existing customers for extensive testing, implemented the production environment in April 2019, and released the re-named POWER5G as a service in July 2019, running on Microsoft® Azure®.
Dental Systems retained the much-loved POWER4G user interface in POWER5G, making it very easy for customers to migrate to the cloud. Said Mr. Higuchi, “GO-Global solved our major problem and gave us the ability to provide our service without changing the UI or product usability, which made for a smooth transition to the cloud for our on-premises users.”
Mr. Higuchi added, “We also liked the ease of integration with other medical solutions, such as electronic medical records and medical image management systems.”
Dental Systems benefitted in other ways, too. Moving to a SaaS model eliminated the need to update and upgrade software onsite and ensured that customer data was secure and consistently backed up by Dental Systems. The customer service team benefitted as well—some software issues could be solved at the server level rather than at every customer site. Also, GO-Global enables support personnel to view an active customer session to provide live support, a feature that end users and the POWER5G support team appreciate.
Additionally, GO-Global's universal print driver facilitates local printing, essential for generating dental receipts for insurance claims.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, Dental Systems was well-positioned to accommodate the sudden change that made remote work the norm —unlike competitors still operating systems on-premises.
Today, thanks to GO-Global, Dental Systems can support remote work, hybrid work models, or traditional work models with equal ease—and pursue emerging markets, like providers focused on serving nursing homes and similar facilities.
Kurashima and Higuchi are pleased with the results. Mr. Higuchi said, "GO-Global solved our problem! Based on the know-how gained from their solution, we were able to provide POWER5G as a service to users very smoothly.”
"GO-Global has enabled us to provide a stable and accessible clinic management platform that has improved the quality of life for our patients and clinical staff," added Mr. Kurashima.
About GO-Global
GO-Global enables organizations to publish Windows® applications from any public, private, or hybrid cloud, to any device that supports a browser. Using GO-Global, IT can deliver Windows applications at up to 40% less than Microsoft® RDS and up to 70% less than VDI solutions from Citrix® and VMware®. Despite its low cost, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability but is easy to install, configure, and use, with considerably less technology overhead required for implementation. For more information, visit www.graphon.com.
