I worked with a Patient Administration System that sat on a VAX/VMS mainframe. I don’t know if it was emulated or what. Users would log in via a terminal on a windows PC.
The clinical suite all ran off various windows servers. They were basically web front-ends on Oracle databases.
I worked at a different trust which uses a native windows app for everything that kept all of the actual data in “the cloud” (the providers servers).
Technically a mini, not a mainframe, although all the categories are broken now.
But yeah, there are still large VAX/VMS systems, I’d guess running on elderly Alpha hardware in most cases, in critically important roles at various hospitals. There are two that I occasionally interact with.
The cloud has been a horrorshow for hospital IT in general. The non-technicals want it NOW because it’s cool and trendy, but the technical folks realize that putting any large portion of mission-critical data and functions off-site is not the best way to provide the level of reliability and regulatory compliance that hospital staff want during a large scale medical emergency like (just for example) the aftermath of a natural disaster. Hospital IT knows that if they don’t deliver cloud, they likely get fired now, and if they do deliver cloud, they likely get fired later.
Some clever folks have finessed it with “private cloud” technology, which is the best answer really. Take advantage of cheap pervasive virtualization and spread it geographically across your own sites, using external providers only for low-value stuff, and instead of paying Sungard or their ilk do up your own DR/BC site for less money and higher performance.
Of course, this thread started by talking about ransomware (literally the day after I found an infection of it right here in my building) and private clouds aren’t immune to ransomware. One of the scientific research organizations I’m loosely affiliated with got hit with ransomware that started by corrupting their backups first… they didn’t pay, so they lost a lot of stuff. Luckily they didn’t lose any of their 20-year continuous data sampling history, though.
Looks like they paid, though a much smaller amount of a bribe to recover their gear - is that even the same hospital?
Quick search and it looks like it is.
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