About Epic EHR
The Epic EHR (Electronic Health Records) software suite brings together essential tools for clinicians and patients in the healthcare space, including Epic Hyperspace and Epic MyChart.
Epic Hyperspace is a clinician-facing platform. It’s a front-end client used to access most parts of the Epic software suite, including patient charts, prescribing, and even print services.
Epic MyChart is a patient-facing web portal. It gives patients the ability to view their medical records and test results, manage their appointments and prescriptions, and more.
Key benefits of load balancing
Optimizing Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) means maximizing availability, performance and security – and that’s where load balancers comes in. Implementing a load balancing solution in front of Epic EHR systems:
- ensures reliable access to critical systems for physicians and caregivers
- helps increase the IT staff’s efficiency
- can introduce a complementary layer of security
- supports health centers in provision of an “always available” application environment.
How to load balance Epic EHR
The load balancer can be deployed as a single unit, although we recommend a clustered pair for resilience & high availability. The deployment concept is as follows:
To load balance Epic EHR, you’ll require:
- Source IP address affinity
- VIPs for Hyperspace and Hyperspace redirect (to force HTTP traffic to use HTTPS)
- Optional VIPs for MyChart and MyChart redirect (to force HTTP traffic to use HTTPS)
The following table shows the ports that are load balanced:
| Port | Protocols | Use |
|---|---|---|
| 80 | TCP/HTTP | Redirect to HTTPS (not strictly load balanced) |
| 443 | TCP/HTTPS | Web Services |