Healius completes IT overhaul with VECTEC, saves AUD $10m

Healius, a prominent healthcare provider in Australia, has completed an extensive IT transformation in collaboration with VECTEC to modernise its infrastructure. The aim is to enhance AI-powered diagnostics, increase system reliability, and achieve up to AUD $10 million in cost reductions.

Healius, servicing millions of patients through brands like Laverty, Dorevitch, QML, and WDP, runs a vast network of over 2000 pathology laboratories and 14 hospitals. The company is vital to Australia's healthcare landscape, where dependable and efficient technology is crucial. However, infrastructure limitations hindered scalability, data access, and overall system efficiency, leading to operational delays.

The move to revolutionise Healius' infrastructure started with an evaluation by VECTEC, which identified scalability challenges, vendor lock-in issues, and inefficiencies in processing AI-driven medical imaging and real-time data.

Alex Larson, Chief Information Officer of Healius, said, "We were hamstrung before we started this digital transformation. Our old hyper-converged infrastructure was failing, and with the increasing reliance on AI-powered diagnostics, we needed a solution that could scale with us."

VECTEC's approach involved a comprehensive assessment of Healius' technology landscape. Steps included an end-to-end infrastructure analysis to detect performance and storage bottlenecks, a technology benchmarking and vendor evaluation to find the most adaptable and economical solution, and designing a tailored, future-ready architecture featuring tiered storage by NetApp.

This collaborative effort aimed to prevent excessive IT expenditures while enhancing operational efficiency and scalability, allowing Healius to innovate and expand sustainably.

The project's outcomes included a resilient, scalable IT infrastructure. Healius is experiencing benefits such as faster diagnostics due to improved system reliability and notable cost savings, which were reported to reach up to AUD $10 million.

Alex Larson, Healius' Chief Technology Officer, said, "At Healius, our mission is to deliver exceptional healthcare outcomes, and our technology must reflect that commitment. Partnering with VECTEC gave us the confidence to make informed decisions about our infrastructure foundations and enhance our strategy, leading us to the solution that supports current needs and future growth." 

VECTEC utilised a technology-agnostic, consulting-driven strategy, enabling Healius to shift from a legacy-dependent model to a robust, scalable IT environment, transforming IT from a mere cost centre to a key business facilitator.

Jack McEvoy, co-founder at VECTEC, remarked, "The pace of AI adoption and infrastructure modernisation is accelerating across the enterprise landscape. CIOs are looking beyond short-term fixes to long-term strategic investments. Our approach helps businesses like Healius make technology decisions that are tailored to them, to drive efficiency, resilience, and innovation—without unnecessary spend."

With a modernised IT framework, Healius is poised to expand and continue its mission of delivering high-quality healthcare with an infrastructure capable of supporting forthcoming digital healthcare transformations.