BridgeHead Software, a leader in healthcare data management, today announced the latest release of its Healthcare Data Management (HDM) solution with a new DICOM Archive Browser (DAB) and increased Cloud support, most notably support for the open Cloud storage standard SWIFT. These updates help make the HDM solution, with its unified platform, a credible place to not only store the entire electronic patient record (EPR) but also to access and manage it.

The DAB is an administrative tool that helps ensure the validity of the DICOM archive. It allows an administrator to search the archive by key metadata (e.g. patient ID, Instance UID) and also use BridgeHead Software's XDS WADO interface to view any part of the series or study to ascertain that data is stored within the archive. The DAB can be used to:

Send any study, series or image to any DICOM workstation allowing manual workflows to be constructed for ‘ologies where there is no automated PACS system
Manage Information Object Change Management (IOCM) requests in the archive, allowing an administrator to see images 'hidden‘ from general viewing
"With its DICOM Archive Browser, BridgeHead Software has created an easy-to-use tool to aid administrators in managing DICOM images," said Joe Marion, principal, Healthcare Integration Strategies LLC. "BridgeHead Software is unique to my knowledge in having worked to close this gap in the process, which is critical for supporting ‘ologies outside of radiology, such as oncology, with appropriate workflow. Indeed, I believe that administrators in radiology could also benefit from the added visibility and management control provided in the tool."

Cloud Support - With added support for the OpenStack Cloud storage standard SWIFT, BridgeHead Software's HDM provides both its partners and customers with a consistent interface to Cloud resources via the SWIFT open object storage system.

At the same time, BridgeHead Software has also added the ability to create offline copies of backups in the cloud by using de-duplication technologies, such as HP StoreOnce, to perform very efficient transfer to storage in the cloud while simultaneously creating an offline, most likely tape, copy of the backup, in the cloud. This gives an organisation the efficiency of backup to cloud but at the same time gives them a tape copy of last resort, which is often critical to data protection strategy.

"The DAB is a good indication of how BridgeHead Software is making the content that it stores, protects and shares more accessible to the end-user, and how we can add more value to any Electronic Patient Record initiative, by making content available to users or applications in an ordered manner," said Tony Cotterill, Chief Product Officer at BridgeHead Software. "This is a first step towards a more robust patient-centric offering which we plan to introduce later this year, enabling clinicians to view all types of data associated with a patient from a single well-organised view."