Real-time insights for life-saving healthcare missions

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Central Operations is part of a nationwide organisation that provides care to more than 290,000 Australians each year — that’s one person every two minutes. In addition to being Australia’s third-largest airline, the RFDS is also the world’s most comprehensive aeromedical organisation, bringing 24-hour emergency medical services and essential health care to remote and outback Australia.

The RFDS has a fleet of more than 63 aircraft operating from 21 bases located across Australia, and as a non-profit organisation it relies heavily on fundraising and donations from the community to purchase and equip its aircraft and to support other major health initiatives.

While the RFDS already had reliable systems in place for planning flights and tracking aircraft activity, the information was siloed in third-party commercial applications and was not available in real time. With many healthcare decisions being a matter of life or death, the organisation needed real-time visibility into its operations across a widely dispersed IT infrastructure and aircraft fleet. Its staff is equally dispersed throughout Australia and many of them are on the road (or in the sky) rather than behind a computer.

Because of these challenges, the RFDS needed a flexible and cost-effective reporting solution that could allow it to centralise all of its key operational insights. Last, but certainly not least, as a non-profit agency that depends on fundraising, the RFDS wanted to see how deeper insights into its data could contribute to its marketing creativity and outreach efforts.

With the help of local reseller SecureWare, the RFDS deployed Splunk software to gain full operational visibility into its IT infrastructure — building reports, alerts and dashboards for a single-pane-of-glass view. The organisation also implemented Splunk Enterprise for security information and event management, monitoring network hardware and applications such as routers, switches, email and web servers.

After grasping the full power of Splunk for its IT infrastructure, the organisation also began collecting, indexing and visualising log data coming from its aircraft — data to analyse and monitor aircraft performance, as well as GPS-based flight tracking data that was previously trapped inside disparate applications. It also began using Splunk software to continuously monitor the condition of temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines, to ensure that they are delivered safely and securely, without any degradation in quality.

Real-time insights

The RFDS uses third-party commercial data aggregation applications for information on the movements of its fleet. Prior to the Splunk deployment, this data was logged only to files within the application and could not be accessed easily or in real time.

“We were able to easily set up Splunk Enterprise to collect, index and process the flight tracking data formerly trapped inside our third-party application log files,” said Adam Ind, IT manager, RFDS. “As a result, we instantly realised the value of creating real-time Splunk reports, which continue to give us the deepest levels of internal operational insights into flight activity. This was absolutely not possible before Splunk.”

The RFDS has also been able to use the ‘Embedded Reports’ function to display these reports within its company intranet website, as well as on digital signage across its numerous land bases. The IT team has set up reports that show information pertaining to inbound and outbound flights for each particular base — useful to crews who need to be ready to meet an aircraft at a moment’s notice. Embedded maps bring in a real-time feed of data coordinates that show the most recent location of each aircraft.

Real-time and historical visibility

RFDS aircraft are loaded with sophisticated avionics that track many aspects of performance. This data is logged every second during critical stages of flight (take-off and landing) and every 10 seconds when at cruising altitude. Before the Splunk Enterprise deployment, engineers could use only the tools provided by the aircraft and engine manufacturers to analyse the logged data in small batches, and lacked the ability to keep a full and centralised history of each aircraft’s performance data.

With Splunk software, the RFDS now collects and indexes this data centrally. In addition, it has the complete set of data on file for each aircraft and keeps this full history available for trend analysis. For instance, engineers can look at how outside air temperature and altitude influence engine temperatures and set alerts about events that may require attention or maintenance procedures.

Monitoring medicines

The RFDS also administers medicines and vaccines, often to remote locations. Many of these medicines are heat-sensitive and have to be refrigerated on land and kept in insulated bags or boxes while in flight. In order to ensure the stability and quality of the medicines, the RFDS has Wi-Fi-enabled sensors that capture temperature readings at 30-second intervals. The devices then transmit this temperature data to a centralised server where it is collected and indexed by Splunk software.

Real-time Splunk reports and alerts on these readings are now sent to the RFDS staff members responsible for the medicines, ensuring temperatures are at their safest levels at all times, whether in storage or in the air. In addition, staff receive a daily report showing hours’ worth of historical sensor data.

Engaging with donors

After seeing the impact Splunk software was having on IT operations and IoT applications, the RFDS’s marketing team approached the IT team for assistance with its web-based fundraising initiative called ‘Buy the Sky’. The campaign encourages donors to purchase a virtual patch of sky along one of the RFDS’s active flight paths over a 12-month period, to support the essential health care the organisation provides to thousands of people who live, work and travel in remote, rural and regional Australia.

The marketing team now provides Buy the Sky donors with weekly updates on the particular life-saving missions the RFDS is undertaking in and around ‘their’ patch of sky. These direct communications allow donors to see their donations at work and have helped the RFDS engage more deeply with its existing supporters and attract new ones.