Disaster Recovery (DR) involves processes that prepare an organization's crucial IT infrastructure to effectively recover from disasters, ensuring the resumption and restoration of essential services. Setting up a DR site is part of the business continuity plan of an organization within institutions ensuring minimal interruptions in case of a disaster. At AIC Kijabe hospital, the KENET Disaster Recovery service ensures business continuity by facilitating swift recovery of the data obtained during the administration of health care services which include emergency care, inpatient, outpatient, theatre, and diagnostic services.

The implementation of the Health Management Information System, the first organizational wide ERP, which has a huge investment and critical data (patient files) brought about the necessity to ensure that measures have been put in place to safeguard the data. This has been done through the Leased Virtual Private Server with storage   which have setup replica of the primary or systems at the organization.

Speaking about the DR, Timothy Makori, IT manager at AIC Kijabe Hospital, attributed the institution’s need for DR to ensuring realtime database synchronization for all the four (4) hospital branches; Main branch, Naivasha, Marira and Westlands to the DR site. Hosting the DR site with KENET ensures that the data is stored safely and the quick and easy recoverability of the critical systems in the event of a disaster as the secondary link automatically picks up if the primary link is down. Being a health institution it is imperative that the data on patients’ medical records is upto date as this informs the health history and follow up, the diagnosis, procedures done, and medication prescribed. The hospital also operates on a referral system where patients can be treated at one centre and referred to another ensuring care continuity.

KENET has three (3) operational data centers with community cloud infrastructure at USIU University, UON (University of Nairobi), and Catholic University (CUEA) that are, used for setting up disaster recovery sites for its members among other services. A disaster recovery site should be easily and rapidly accessible in the event of a disaster including restoration from the off-site backup site.

The cost of offering this service depends on an institution’s requirements. KENET’s DR services include Leased Off-site backup storage, Leased Virtual Private Server with storage (to setup replica primary or secondary systems), Collocation of DR server and a dedicated communication link between the DR sites to ensure fast and seamless data transfer.