Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
ILM is a strategy for managing critical business information from the moment it is created to the time it becomes obsolete. Comport provides end-to-end solutions to capture, manage, retain, and deliver information according to its value.
Medical Archive
Diagnostic Imaging is exploding, but as the use of digital imaging grows, so do the costs and the risks. The challenge for healthcare facilities is maintaining medical images for long-term access while protecting them in a way that meets HIPAA requirements for privacy and disaster recovery.
HP Medical Archive provides the most extensive and full featured medical image archive available today. It is a tightly integrated turnkey solution from HP and includes full onsite installation, straightforward implementation with existing PACS and three years 24x7 onsite hardware and software support from HP Services. The HP MAS is a storage “GRID”, a content addressable storage technology with a Healthcare application-specific interface.
HP Medical Archiving Solution(MAS) provides:
- Cost effective, HIPAA compliant, long term storage of medical images.
- Integration into existing environment – centralized or distributed throughout the enterprise.
- Scalability to accommodate growth requirements, multiple PACS applications and Modalities without business disruption.
- Grid-powered storage system: The “GRID” refers to a collection of interconnected servers (Nodes) providing a common storage pool. HP MAS is comprised of rack(s) of Proliant Servers in a federated grid architecture…each Node is responsible for providing specific services within the GRID:
- Gateway Nodes (GN): Two or more GNs manage PACS CIFS/NFS connections to MAS GRID and/or direct incoming traffic using the optional DICOM API.
- Control Nodes (CN): Two or more CNs provide content management services including metadata storage, application of ILM policies and location management of object data replications. They also are the GRID Domain Controller for connectivity and topology information.
- Storage Nodes (SN): Two or more SNs store, move, and retrieve object data.
- Admin Nodes (AN): This is the administrative monitoring, control, and alarm notification node (may want a second for redundancy). It manages grid-wide configurations, connection profiles, replication groups, GRID tasks and the HIPAA compliant audit function.
- Multiple facilities: GRID Nodes can be centralized in a datacenter, distributed across a campus using a LAN, or, connected across a WAN to map to the organization’s needs. For example, half the Nodes could be at a disaster recovery site for business continuance and to reduce daily backup workload.
- Multiple tiers of storage media: Storage Nodes can use various types of media (SCSI, SATA, FC SAN or Tape) for accessibility and efficient storage management.
- Data integrity assured: Objects ingested into the GRID are digitally signed and automatically stored in at least two separated locations to provide redundancy. All copies of every object are continually checked to insure they have not become corrupted or changed in any way. If so, a new copy is created to maintain redundancy in the GRID. Encryption can be applied for those objects requiring it.
- Fast performance: GRID uses HTTP streaming technology with compression to pre-stage images to the edge of the GRID and to provide optimum performance over the network connections.
- High availability: Multiple network links to the Gateway Node are allowed for redundancy and multiple GNs in a GRID are required. Nodes are connected in a secure, switched network for network management, content control and data movement.
- Intelligent ILM: Business policies can be applied for every image in the archive to automate retention policies, allowed compression types, encryption, storage media, etc.
- Interfaces to existing PACS and RIS systems: Except for faster, more reliable, more flexible access to patient records and studies, clinicians will not see a difference in the way they work…no change required in the way they work. The HP MAS has certified interfaces for almost all major PACS applications using a standard network share or using the API for specific DICOM connections to PACS. Customized DICOM connections can be implemented using Image Management software from Acuo and others for even greater integration with the existing healthcare IT environment.
- Cost effective storage of medical images and documents: HP MAS automates the long term, secure, efficient storage of healthcare records and allows shared, authorized access to these documents over their lifecycle. It avoids technology obsolescence thereby avoiding future data migration expenses and can also be used with an Image Management layer to avoid migrations of healthcare records caused by new or changing PACS, RIS and HIS applications.
- Accommodates growth requirements: The HP Medical Archiving Solution is scalable to multi-petabyte capacity in small, affordable increments because of its modular GRID design. This allows new, more dense, more efficient storage technology to be added into the GRID as it becomes available in the future. And because of the redundancy built into the GRID, all changes are accomplished without disruption to the healthcare operations.
Comport Consulting will help you stay focused on patient care. Our solutions will; reduce cost and management of patient data; facilitate governance (e.g., HIPAA) for long-term retention; mitigate patient safety risks with retrieval of unaltered data; and provide on-demand access for collaborative treatment.