Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc

Setting the scene: managing massive data volumes

Saint-Luc University Hospital in Brussels is one of the largest hospitals in Belgium, with 6,000 staff members and around 1 million care activities – including 460.000 consultations, 35.000 hospitalizations, 20.000 surgical interventions – per year. The hospital’s BI team uses SAS 9 for data analysis and reporting based on non-medical data from finance, HR, and other support services.

The scale of the platform is significant. “The billing data alone speaks for itself,” explains Mevenig. “We process 250 million billing lines annually, which we keep available on the platform for a full decade. In total, this amounts to 2.5 billion billing lines — and that’s just the accounting data.”

The problem: a seven-version jump

Until recently, Saint-Luc used SAS 9.4 M1, hosted on a Windows server in the hospital’s data center, to manage and analyze this data. This version reached end-of-support last year. But during the period Saint-Luc had been running version M1 — around 10 years — SAS 9 had already evolved to M8. Given the numerous versions between M1 and M8, a simple update wasn’t an option, so the hospital enlisted the help of SAS partner LACO to bring it up to date.

The solution: detailed roadmap, meticulous execution

The first step was to install new server infrastructure. “In most cases, an update spans two to three versions, say, from version two to version five,” explains Gregory Ong, SAS Practice Lead at LACO. “You start with the current platform and perform the necessary updates, while running both versions in parallel. At Saint-Luc, we had to bridge seven versions. This turned the project from an upgrade into a full migration.”

This also provided an opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of on-premises versus the cloud, and Saint-Luc ultimately opted for the on-premises version of SAS 9. “Our IT department prefers to perform critical operations on our own servers,” says Mevenig. “For this project, we saw no significant added value in running the software in the cloud. So we installed a new on-premises Windows server as the foundation.”

In a hospital environment, timing is everything. “SAS encompasses data crucial to the hospital’s operations, including finance and HR,” Mevenig explains. “We had to synchronize this data with the new SAS version, which was located on a different server. But it goes without saying that we couldn’t simply stop our activities at any point.”

Here, LACO’s experience made all the difference. “LACO developed a very detailed roadmap in close consultation with us,” says Mevenig. “Their experts mapped out all the necessary steps and guided us on how to best approach them. Security and data confidentiality were a key focus, and the expertise and experience of the LACO team really gave us peace of mind.”

The result: a future-proof BI platform (and also a model project)

The initial driver for the migration was the loss of support for SAS 9 M1. “I honestly don’t think we would have made the leap otherwise,” admits Mevenig. “The old software still served us perfectly well. But now that the migration is complete, we’re definitely seeing other benefits. The old version was reaching its capacity limits — that problem is now solved. And our users haven’t reported any hiccups since the migration, which also indicates that everything went smoothly. As an administrator, obviously you’re delighted when the software runs as expected.”

Gregory explains that LACO and Saint-Luc were quick to understand each other’s needs. “Having the right people on board, from both the integrator and the client, is crucial to the project’s success,” he says. “A migration risks delay and budget overruns if the client’s IT department doesn’t make the project a priority. But that wasn’t the case here at all. All our meetings were efficient and to the point. Business, IT and LACO were fully aligned, with excellent communication and collaboration. As a result, we completed the project on time and well within budget. You could call it a model project!”

“We’re delighted with the collaboration with LACO,” concludes Mevenig. “Even after delivery, we continued to receive all the support we needed. We’re set for many years to come with our SAS solution and we consider LACO the perfect partner for future integration projects.”

BI Analyst, UZ Saint-Luc