CareFusion Achieves Compliance and Centralized Asset Management
Since standardizing on Helix Core, CareFusion stores large data sets on a single platform and is able to answer the whodunit-type questions required by stringent code and compliance regulations.
Bringing Method to the Madness
Centralized asset management
An administrator's delight
Distributed development is easy
There are over 50 offerings between our two product lines and their software and related documentation is maintained under Helix."
Why CareFusion Relies On Helix Core
CareFusion is a global corporation serving the health care industry with products and services that help hospitals improve the safety and quality of care. Headquartered in San Diego, California. CareFusion (NYSE: CFN) employs more than 15,000 employees worldwide, serving customers in more than 120 countries.
CareFusion uses Helix Core as their single source of truth to store and version their source code and digital assets for their market leading technologies; Pyxis® and Alaris®. Pyxis® Perioperative Solutions help ensure that clinicians have the supplies and medications they need at the right place and time, while Pyxis® Medication Management positively impacts patient safety across the entire continuum of care. Alaris® pumps and sets are used in patient care for non-invasive medical monitoring of patients.
Achieving Compliance in a Heavily Regulated Industry
CareFusion is heavily regulated by healthcare code and compliance regulations. Large data sets are stored for the various product lines, so traceability is vital for auditing.
"We need to be careful to ensure that our data demonstrates compliance for quality and auditing purposes at every point. Helix Core is particularly efficient at distributing vast numbers of files. It can manage source code and handle the distribution of files to live runtime environments and provide answers to the whodunit-type questions with regard to source code and updates for production and QA. Helix Core provides an audit trail for pharmaceutical manufacturers according to the rules published by the Office of the Inspector General for the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, the AdvaMed Code of Ethics on Interactions with Health Care Professionals, and applicable laws," explained Sonny Pham, the Perforce administrator at CareFusion.
"Helix Core also supports traceability by controlling access through administrator tools that define permissions to authorized users," added Pham.
Centralizing Asset Management
"Before we standardized on Helix Core, each group used their own process to store files," said Pham. Development, document control, project management, QA, and marketing used multiple folders or branches to maintain code, digital assets, projects schedules, and documents for each release.
Collecting all the components for a release was cumbersome and painstaking. A centralized solution was needed to streamline the process. To bring a method to this madness, all the groups were asked to store their assets within Perforce while a solution was sought. Soon, users noticed that Perforce was very effective as a centralized versioning and storage repository, and made the tasks at hand easy. Users quickly tapped into the potential of Perforce, using its feature toolset to manage all the files required for a particular release.
"Only the files for each release were merged to the release line from the development line, making my job easier. Helix Core is an administrator's dream tool," noted Pham.
Helix Core Is An Administrator's Delight
Pyxis® and Alaris® are two main product lines that have over four-dozen offerings and multiple monthly releases with varying schedules. Any SCM tool in use needs to be able to handle these releases seamlessly.
"As a full-time administrator, I manage about 27 releases a month for Pyxis® and Alaris®. There are over 50 offerings between the two product lines and their software and related documentation is maintained under Helix Core.
Helix Core makes it easy to manage multiple release lines for the products and leaves me plenty of time to enforce rules and implement triggers for the purpose of generating reports, code reviews and managing the project. Additionally, I can easily monitor the bug tracking tool as well," said Pham.
"At the 2009 Helix Core User Conference, the Helix Core technical support team gave me a quick tutorial on the administration tool. Many of our super users are now trained to use the administration tool and are efficiently managing permissions for their teams," added Pham.
"Helix Core constantly amazes me. Their technical support is world class, it has many integrated solutions to choose from, and is the easiest tool to learn and administer. I could not have asked for better," concluded Pham.
Distributed Development Made Easy
CareFusion performs development in two geographical locations: San Diego, CA and Quebec, Canada. The Helix Core server is located in San Diego and is accessed from two locations within the city, and from Quebec, Canada through a Helix Core proxy (P4P) server. File activity is constant between the offices.
"Performing a sync task happens rapidly and opens for edit and submits are nearly instantaneous, irrespective of file sizes. The power of Helix Core is noteworthy; seamlessly handling large data sets and scaling across distributed teams. Initially when implementing the proxy server we noticed there was a sizable lag between the main and proxy servers, so tests were performed to analyze the problem. We soon realized that the issue wasn't with Helix Core but with our network. Resolving the issue let us access all the pending files within a matter of minutes and we were able to resume work efficiently," explained Pham.
Simplify Release Management, Support Compliance, and More with Helix Core
Teams in heavily regulated industries, who manage complex and product lines, or who have global development teams can try Helix Core version control for free. Get a single source of truth, automate workflows, manage terabytes of data, and more with enterprise version control — free for your small team.