IBM wins New York health disaster-recovery contract

IBM has signed a $380m contract to run disaster-recovery centres and other IT resources for three New York hospitals, the company plans to announce on Thursday.

The contract covers three of New York's largest hospitals - Mount Sinai Hospital, New York University Medical Centre and New York University Downtown Hospital.

IBM will administer data centres centralising IT facilities for each hospital, said David Leiderbach, vice president for IBM's health care industry business. Applications and data for each hospital will be stored in a main data centre near Manhattan and a backup facility 100 miles away, with the backup data constantly updated through real-time mirroring.

The upshot is that in the event of a crisis, critical hospital systems can be up and running from the backup facility with little or no interruption in business. "We're immediately in a position to re-create the applications and data," Leiderbach said.

That's a goal that has assumed new importance for the hospitals after the 11 September, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, he added.

"NYU Downtown was within the hot zone of the 9-11 disaster," Leiderbach said. "They very much felt the pain and challenge from an information systems standpoint when you don't have a clear continuity plans."

Besides managing IT resources for the hospitals, IBM will also tap into its growing life sciences division to help power research projects at the hospitals. "A relationship like this allows them to outsource the operational management of IT infrastructure, so they can focus on taking care of patients," Leiderbach said.

David Becker writes for CNET News.com