Citrix lends support for Special Olympics
Athletes competing this week in the Shanghai 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games can focus on their performance goals, knowing that their medical needs are taken care of.
Thin-client vendor Citrix Systems is providing the necessary infrastructure for medical teams to access athletes' medical information from 70 venues located across 19 districts in Shanghai, on a range of wired and wireless devices. The sporting event will be held from Oct. 2 to 11.
Among the applications delivered on the Citrix infrastructure is the Special Olympics' medical record system, dubbed Medical Encounter Software (MES), which is provided by electronic heath records vendor Health One Global.
Andre Mendes, chief information officer for the Special Olympics, told ZDNet Asia in a phone interview Monday that the MES holds "critical medical histories and records" of each of the 7,500 athletes from more than 160 participating countries. The database is centrally hosted in a data center in Shanghai.
"By delivering the mission-critical applications to PCs and other devices regardless of their hardware specifications and bandwidth available, our medical teams [will be] able to address the medical needs of our athletes regardless of their location," Mendes said.
According to Dennis Rose, Citrix Systems' vice president of the Pacific region, SSL VPN (Secure Sockets Layer virtual private network) appliances will provide "secure, always-on, single point-of-access", allowing real-time updates and access of medical records and game results.
Citrix Systems is sponsoring products for the application delivery infrastructure and providing on-site technical support at the Special Olympics.