Building a new practice? Don't make these costly IT mistakes

So, you’re building a new practice?  It’s an exciting time. But daunting too. You need to make a lot of tough decisions that will impact your practice over the next five years. The technology you decide upon will be critical to your practice profits, productivity and security.

Things on the "must-have" list include:

• Firewall
• Audiovisual (AV)
• A well-rounded protection strategy

All good IT starts with a good "brain"

Let’s talk about the journey that you are undertaking and why it’s important to look at your technology from a holistic point of view.

You may already know which practice management system (PMS) you want to proceed with.

If it's fully cloud-based, this may remove your requirements for a server. However, this is not always the case, depending on what you intend on doing for your imaging.

Speaking of imaging, this is the next largest piece of the puzzle. If you are going plain 2D with intraoral then you don’t need a server if your PMS is in the cloud. However,  you really should, if you are using an on-premise PMS.

Additionally, if you are going full 3D CBCT, then this is where the server becomes a much more compelling option. Why? It comes down to the sheer amount of data that you not only need to store, but protect at the same time.

With each CBCT image potentially using 1GB of space, we often find our practices using terabytes upon terabytes of storage (this is a lot). Ultimately, should something go wrong then it can take quite some time to recover this data either from the cloud or locally.

The #1 mistake practices make when buying computers

While a server is the brain of your practice’s IT infrastructure, the computers are the muscles and as such, they’ll need to be ready for some heavy lifting.  This is where things can get complicated.

First, make sure your computers meet the specifications of not just the equipment you are buying, but also the equipment you may buy in the next four years.

For example, not every practice starts off with an intraoral scanner, but most end up with one (like a puppy that followed you home from a trade show one day).

Once you know these requirements, it’s time to go to Harvey Norman or JB right?  Maybe not.

A JB Hi-Fi or Harvey Norman deal is unlikely to cut the mustard. Here’s why:

1. These machines come with the home editions of the operating systems most of the time and should something go wrong, your imaging and PMS vendors can make you upgrade them before they will support them
2. The shorter one-year warranties often require you to take the computer back to the store if there’s a problem. This can take weeks to get fixed should you have a hardware issue
3. Due to lower quality parts and build, we see a lot of these cheaper machines being replaced sooner than their business-grade cousins.

Business-grade HP machines, on the other hand, are the gold standard.

1. They only come with the professional versions of Windows and come with less unrequired software that would otherwise slow them down
2. They come with three-year next business day onsite warranties (HP literally comes to you if there’s a problem, to save you from downtime)

Whilst we can’t recommend using the computers longer than the warranty period, as this can affect your uptime, we generally see them lasting a practice for 3-5 years.

Making everything talk to each other (safely)

Your network is your practice’s central nervous system and as such, we need to look at the equipment that you put in place to get these signals from the brain (server) to the muscles (computers).

This is where you need to look at your firewall, network switching and wireless.

A well-structured network will give your practice MANY years of trouble-free computing and we prefer vendors that have proven track records. The alternative is equipment that your internet provider gives you - which is often at the lower end of the scale for quality, performance, security and cost.

We really like HP equipment for 'switching' (allows different devices to talk to each other) and UniFi Wireless as the HP comes with a lifetime warranty. The UniFi Wireless is quite robust and at an extremely reasonable price point.

For your firewall, make sure it is hardware-based and ask plenty of questions around what it does and doesn’t do, such as is it flexible for our future growth, is the 'firmware' up to date, who will have access?

Our '3-2-1' backup rule to stay safe

It’s not a matter of if but when data is lost. If you’re not reliably backing up your data, you’re going to be in a world of pain.

There’s a wide range of backup protocols among different IT companies; some good, some not.

• 3 copies of your data
• copies onsite (the data that is in operation and a local backup
• 1 copy offsite (cloud is the gold standard here)

Make sure the software being used for backups is in a supported configuration by the software vendor and that the data is not just being copied to your IT provider's office/home/shed which provides additional risk.

These backups need to be protected from getting hacked such as where your offsite data is protected in the cloud.

While there are lots of things to consider when building a new practice, your technology should form a key part of your planning.

Plan it well and you'll enjoy the benefits that technology can bring for years to come.  Failing to plan your tech can be expensive and time-consuming… and who wants that?

If you are seeking to understand more about Teamwork Technology, do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team today, or call 1300 27 33 22. You can also reach out directly to Teamwork Technology to learn more. Please phone 1300 456 901 or visit teamworktech.com.au.