Bluefire’s prescription for IT health
Loci Medical, a medical recruitment and locum agency with headquarters in Sydney and an office in Brisbane, specialises in the placement of both Australian and overseas doctors in hospital-based locums and permanent positions throughout New South Wales, the ACT, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Run by health professionals, the agency offers expert advice and support to Australian, New Zealand or overseas doctors seeking locums in Australia.
Additionally, Loci Medical assists hospitals in their search for high-quality medical practitioners able to work at competitive rates. The agency also specialises in permanent placements to meet the requirements and needs of local and overseas medical practitioners.
The challenge: Sharing information between remote sites
When medical practitioner and Managing Director of Loci Medical, Dr Peter Cronin, first thought of expanding his Sydney medical recruitment agency to Queensland, he confronted several major challenges. Not only did he want effective software specific to his recruitment industry but he needed to set up a centralised database so that his employee in Brisbane could access vital company information quickly and easily.
“If we were going to operate in both Sydney and Brisbane, we needed to access our database from both locations and we needed the technology to do that,” he said. “When you start out, you rely on friends to assist you with their expertise but, with time, you look for increasing levels of professionalism in order to avoid problems such as downtime. Email downtime, for example, is a nightmare in our kind of industry and, despite broadband, that’s what we were getting.
“I wanted to focus on my business rather than on IT issues, so reliability of assistance and service and better security were important to me.”
Loci Medical’s response
Dr Cronin was impressed with Bluefire’s knowledge, the quality of hardware and technology they used, and their installation of the Citrix network. “Bluefire doesn’t come cheap but their staff are friendly, knowledgeable and undeniably they provide a quality service to their customers,” he said. “It’s a relief now to have our documentation in one place and to know that our data is backed up every day off-site. So if anything happens in our office or if our laptops are stolen, we still have access to the data we need.
“Bluefire’s reliability and expertise, which are second to none, allows us to focus on our business rather than on IT issues and our staff are conscious of these improvements.
“Although we are a home-based operation and haven’t yet moved into commercial premises, the Citrix system enables us to function at the highest professional level. Recently, for example, I was in New Zealand and it was a simple matter to access my email account and our database in the Sydney office.
“IT issues in general can take up a lot of a small-business owner’s time. By outsourcing the IT component of our business to Bluefire, we’ve been able to put time and energy into our business. That’s a lot less stressful for all of us, if I can avoid IT nightmares I will.
“Additionally, the Citrix system’s reliability and speedier Internet access, which facilitates research, means we can provide a better service to our clients"