Data Management Healthcheck Survey Reveals Health IT’s Top Spending Priorities

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.

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

To request additional information or sign up to receive an
executive summary of the research when it is available, please
contact Rose Ross at rose@omarketing.co.uk

(ends)

Media Contacts

UK and EMEA

Rose Ross

Omarketing

+44 208 255 5225

+44 7976 154597

rose@omarketing.co.uk

www.twitter.com/Rose_at_O

www.twitter.com/Omarketingnews

US

Elizabeth S. Glaser

Dodge Communications

770-576-2551

eglaser@dodgecomunications.com

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/BridgeHeadHSV

About 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.

 

SOURCE