The Communication Department at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is responsible for telecommunications services across the entire Medical Center (the hospital, clinic, and medical school). To provide this service, the Communication Department must house all employees’ information. However, the FileMaker database they were using was aging and no longer supported. They came to us exploring whether to upgrade their existing FileMaker database or continue a struggling database venture that involved starting over from scratch using a different technology.

The Challenge

The DHMC Communication department provides telecommunications services to all three branches of DHMC. While their FileMaker system had been functionally sound, it was no longer supported by FileMaker. Further, their system needed to integrate with the web. Prior to coming to us, DHMC tried to upgrade their system using open-source technology outside FileMaker (PHP & MySQL), but the venture was proving laborious and unfulfilled.

The Solution

FileMaker’s low cost-of-ownership won DHMC over. They decided to abandon their other database project and got working with us on upgrading to the latest version of FileMaker. We created a thorough plan to upgrade the system and ensure no data was lost while minimizing disruption to DHMC and its employees. After thorough testing, we rolled out their new FileMaker system over a weekend.

The Results

Their prior FileMaker system was limited in its functionality and upgrading allowed us to implement new relational features and functionality. One benefit that we were able to implement was programming DHMC’s online phonebook to update in real time as the database is updated (it previously updated overnight). Also, sticking with FileMaker saved DHMC the training time and lack of familiarity involved with introducing a new system.