Secure storage and management of patient data are the most pressing issues as hospitals transition to electronic patient records
Ashtead, UK – 14 June 2010 – Research from a global survey by BridgeHead Software, the Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) company, has revealed that secure data management is the healthcare industry’s most pressing issue as hospitals transition from paper-based health records to electronic systems.
BridgeHead Software
The Data Management Healthcheck 2010, a global survey into hospitals’ ongoing strategies for managing their IT systems, found that the top IT spending priority for 2010 was disaster recovery (44 per cent), closely followed by Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS, 38 per cent) and digitising paper records (35 per cent).
John McCann, Director of Marketing at BridgeHead Software, said, “The healthcare industry’s data environment is notoriously complex, with most hospitals navigating a variety of systems from a range of vendors for managing different types of clinical data in different locations, both on and off hospital premises. When healthcare information systems go down, bringing that information back online is an intricate process. Healthcare IT professionals need to know which applications and data have to be reinstated, and in which order. Given this complexity, it is not surprising that disaster recovery is the top IT investment priority in healthcare today.”
Tony Cotterill, CEO and President at BridgeHead Software, added, “Roughly 20 to 30 per cent of all the world’s storage resides in healthcare. Yet hospitals often find themselves accepting storage and disaster recovery solutions from other industry sectors that do not necessarily understand and accommodate the healthcare industry’s uniquely complex data environment. As hospitals continue transitioning towards fully electronic patient records, they would be wise to investigate storage, data management and disaster recovery solutions tailored specifically to meet their own organisational needs.”
As BridgeHead Software reported last month, the Data Management Healthcheck also found that over two-thirds (69 per cent) of healthcare organisations expected their data volumes to increase this year. Of those, the majority (65 per cent) said PACS imaging files were the main culprits, followed by files held in the Electronic Patient Record (EPR – 45.5 per cent) and scanned documents, e.g. proof of insurance and healthcare proxy (43 per cent). In spite of rising data volumes, only a quarter (26 per cent) claimed to have full archiving capabilities that migrated content to the appropriate storage as dictated by their pre-defined policies.
Only 15 per cent of respondents listed cloud storage among their top three investment priorities, in spite of the recent buzz around cloud computing. And only 12 per cent prioritised green IT: further confirmation of BridgeHead Software’s April report that green IT is currently more of an aspiration than a reality at most hospitals.
Data Management Healthcheck 2010
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Rose Ross
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Elizabeth S. Glaser
Dodge Communications
770-576-2551
[email protected]About BridgeHead Software
BridgeHead Software, the Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) company, offers a scalable, future-proof platform to overcome rising data volumes and increasing storage costs while delivering peace of mind around the access, availability and protection of critical electronic patient data.
Trusted by more than 1,000 hospitals worldwide, BridgeHead Software solves healthcare organisations’ backup, recovery and archiving challenges. BridgeHead’s HSV solutions are designed to operate with any hospital’s chosen software applications and storage hardware, regardless of vendor. This presents healthcare organisations with more choice, flexibility and control over the way data is accessed, protected and managed. The net effect – better utilisation of hardware resources and, more importantly, the efficient distribution, availability and use of vital healthcare data.
To learn more about BridgeHead Software, visit
http://www.bridgeheadsoftware.com To follow BridgeHead Software on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/BridgeHeadHSVAbout Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV)
Healthcare Storage Virtualization is a technology platform that decouples software applications from the physical storage hardware on which the application data resides. By separating these applications from the storage device/s, healthcare organisations have a lot more choice, flexibility and control over the way data is accessed, protected and managed. The net effect – better utilisation of hardware resources and, more importantly, the efficient access and use of critical electronic patient data.
HSV allows healthcare organisations to take ownership of their data even though it may reside on disparate software and hardware systems. Being vendor-agnostic, BridgeHead HSV has the ability to interface with any storage platform intelligently, creating better and broader availability of content as well as prohibiting unwanted access and providing comprehensive disaster recovery capability.
In addition, BridgeHead HSV technology offers powerful connectivity to all storage media types. As part of its advanced data protection and archiving features, HSV allows files to be transformed (e.g. compressed and de-duplicated) invisibly in the background, irrespective of media type and functionality, vastly reducing the capacity required across the storage real estate and often delaying the need for hardware upgrades.
Finally, BridgeHead’s focus on healthcare lies at the heart of HSV. Consequently, all of the common native standards found within healthcare IT are supported e.g. HL7, DICOM XDS style interfaces etc. This support allows speedy integration of the HSV solution resulting in a more rapid return on investment.
