Healthcare Storage Virtualization Whitepaper. A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges

Transcription

1 Healthcare Storage Virtualization Whitepaper A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges

2 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 organizations 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 organizations with more choice, flexibility and control over the way data is accessed, protected and managed. The net effect better utilization of hardware resources and, more importantly, the efficient distribution, availability and use of vital healthcare data. Learn more about BridgeHead Software at Follow BridgeHead Software on Twitter at

3 Content 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 4 Key Data Management and Storage Challenges in Healthcare 4 Rising data volumes 4 Regulation and compliance pressures (data protection and security) 5 Controlling cost 5 Disaster recovery and improving backup times 5 Interoperability and sharing of data (or not) 5 Data migration headaches 6 What is Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV)? 7 HSV Advanced Services 8 Four Key Benefits of HSV 8 1. Improved storage utilization 8 2. Trouble-free data migration 8 3. Enhanced content access 8 4. Better data protection and security 9 The H in HSV 10 Conclusion A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges 2

4 Executive Summary Healthcare IT strategists today face complex challenges: Healthcare data volume is growing rapidly, resulting from: the push towards a paperless environment; ongoing technological advances in clinical appliances and applications; and the increase in the computerization of hospital back-office systems Concurrently, healthcare IT professionals are struggling with the complexity of data sharing among IT systems, departments and hospitals. Data today typically resides in stand-alone silos, making it impossible for clinicians to view comprehensive data in one place Data needs to migrate several times from one storage facility to another, or across applications requiring the time, resources and effort of healthcare IT professionals to ensure that hospital systems can continue to operate, providing the necessary service levels of expected care. Scheduling these processes is an ongoing problem which frequently leaves critical hospital data on unsupported hardware Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) enables IT strategists to address these challenges. HSV is a flexible data and storage management platform that decouples software applications from the allocation and management of the physical storage hardware on which the application data resides. By separating these applications from their respective storage devices, healthcare organizations have more choice, flexibility and control over the way data is accessed, protected and managed. The aim, ultimately, is to ensure optimal efficiency and cost effectiveness through better utilization of hardware resources and, more importantly, the easy, safe and reliable access, use and management of critical electronic patient data. Hospitals consequently benefit from: Improved storage utilization. HSV helps healthcare IT professionals optimize the use of their current infrastructures, while minimizing the amount of data stored, through advanced services such as compression and de-duplication to maximize available storage utilization Trouble-free data migration. The HSV platform allows the controlled movement of data across storage devices, as and where required. As the data is managed by the virtualization platform, it can be transferred between storage devices, without impact on the application Enhanced content access. HSV applies comprehensive meta-data and full text indexing to the data as it flows through the virtualization platform and is written into storage, enabling it to present a single, virtual data repository available to applications, storage devices or users directly Better data protection and security. Through virtualization, data can be transferred onto geographically dispersed, secure systems that feature encryption and full digital signatures, thus protecting the data (which in turn optimizes backup) and ensuring it is secure. In short, HSV is a construct that is underpinned by proven software, whereby a hospital s data management challenges can be addressed. While it s a destination to be achieved systematically over time, its benefits can be realized almost immediately. 3 BridgeHead Healthcare Storage Virtualization

5 Introduction Healthcare is evolving. The digital age has significantly impacted the way the industry operates. Like many other commercial organizations, healthcare providers have a fantastic opportunity to harness the benefits that these new technologies bring. Healthcare organizations must overcome countless challenges to adapt to this new landscape. One such obstacle is how to efficiently and cost effectively share, manage and store their data, while continuing or enhancing the level of care offered to patients. Written with the healthcare IT strategist in mind, this white paper explores the data and storage management challenges providers face and explains a new concept known as Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV). Devised by BridgeHead Software, HSV offers healthcare IT organizations a new way to think about how data is managed and stored across their infrastructures, helping them overcome some major hurdles now, while providing a robust strategy for the future. Key Data Management and Storage Challenges in Healthcare Rising data volumes Healthcare data volume is growing rapidly, year on year, with no slowdown in sight. A recent survey indicated that more than 93% of healthcare IT professionals expect their organizations data to increase in One factor is the push toward a paperless environment with fully digitized current and historical patient records such as the electronic healthcare record (EHR) or electronic patient record (EPR). Ongoing technological advances in clinical appliances and applications that constantly increase the numbers, size and detail of captured images, such as the next generation of medical imaging systems (including magnetic resonance and computed tomography devices, for example) represent another factor. Additionally, there has been a significant increase in the computerization of hospital back-office systems such as , word processing and spreadsheets applications, as well as personnel and hospital administrative systems. This upsurge equals complexity in terms of the methods and means hospitals employ to manage and store their data. The challenge of alleviating data management pressures lies firmly at the door of the healthcare IT professional. Regulation and compliance pressures (data protection and security) The barriers to successful storage management are compounded by regulation and compliance mandates, as well as fears of litigation. There are now widespread codes of practice and guidelines in place dictating the length of time that patient information must be kept on record. While these rules vary from department to department, country to country, it s not uncommon for data to be kept for the life of that patient, or longer. For example, in England the recommended retention period for oncology is thirty years after the conclusion of treatment or eight years after the death of the patient. In the United States, healthcare organizations must abide by a complex matrix of federal, state and local mandates. For example, recommendations for the retention of radiation oncology records, according to the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, include the complete lifetime of all patients, extending to at least five years after death. Furthermore, regular media reports about important data that has been lost or stolen lead government and 1 BridgeHead Software, Data Management Healthcheck Survey, A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges 4

6 regulatory authorities to ensure data management, protection and security rises to the very top of the healthcare IT agenda. This is demonstrated in the United States by its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and in the United Kingdom by the Data Protection Act. Ensuring the data is properly protected via requisite encryption, authentication, backup and disaster recovery strategies places additional pressure on the healthcare IT professional. Controlling cost While healthcare organizations face increasing pressure to reduce spending, healthcare IT costs particularly storage costs continue to rise. In fact, one-third of the average IT budget is spent on storage. The primary storage facilities that house the majority of rapidly growing healthcare data are costly to purchase and maintain. For example, for every pound or dollar spent on a disk, it costs fifteen times that amount to manage the data it stores. Furthermore, buying more disk without optimizing that data is a tactical and short-term solution, not a future-proof data management and storage strategy that suits the demands of today s healthcare organization. Approximately 80% of the data maintained on primary storage facilities by a typical hospital is static (i.e. data that has not been accessed in more than six months and will never be changed). Furthermore, a significant proportion of this data exists in more than one instance. By offloading the static data onto more cost effective storage facilities, a hospital could reclaim 80% of their primary storage space for reuse. Given the pressure on healthcare organizations to reduce spending and control costs, an HSV solution could bring significant savings. Disaster recovery and improving backup times With natural disasters, as well as more common outages and disruptions, healthcare organizations require a robust disaster recovery (DR) strategy. The healthcare IT department is responsible for ensuring continuity of service that minimizes potential downtime and speeds recovery time should disaster occur. According to a recent survey 2, the majority of professionals list DR as their highest priority, yet many hospitals don t have a complete recovery strategy in place. Likewise, many claim to have a workable DR system, but have never tested it. At the heart of the failure is the hospitals struggle to maintain a robust data backup process. Largely due to the sheer volume of information, many institutions can t physically back up the vast amount of data within available time windows. With increasing volumes of data, backup processes (and their impact on DR) are only going to become more challenging in the future. Interoperability and sharing of data (or not) A key challenge facing healthcare IT professionals today is the complexity of sharing data and storage among IT systems, departments and hospitals. Part of this problem is that many IT solutions operate in silos and, therefore, the storage is dictated by the applications. In the case of medical images, systems in various hospital departments are often implemented as end-to-end solutions with an integrated application and storage layer working together. This means that the medical images stored within endoscopy, mammography and digital radiography, for example, have their own individual storage facilities. Healthcare IT professionals continue to battle with this inefficiency, searching for the means to use a single storage repository that can be utilized for multiple applications, across departments and even across geographically dispersed hospitals. Data migration headaches Given that the typical lifespan of a storage device is between three and five years, but that the data can live on even beyond the life of the patient, data migration is a perpetual issue. While the increased digitization of healthcare-related information offers many opportunities to deliver better quality care, it also results in an ongoing need for data migrations. Migrations require the time, resources and effort of healthcare IT professionals to ensure that hospital systems can continue to operate, providing expected levels of care. 5 BridgeHead Healthcare Storage Virtualization 2 BridgeHead Software, Data Management Healthcheck Survey, 2010.

7 What is Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV)? HSV is a flexible data and storage management platform that decouples software applications from the allocation and management of the physical storage hardware on which the application data resides. By separating these applications from their respective storage devices, healthcare organizations have more choice, flexibility and control over the way data is accessed, protected and managed. The aim, ultimately, is to ensure optimal efficiency and cost effectiveness through better utilization of hardware resources and, more importantly, the easy, safe and reliable access, use and management of critical electronic patient data. HSV achieves this by allowing data from disparate applications, departments and geographies, based on administrator-defined policies, to be transparently distributed across common pools of shareable storage hardware, accessible to users as needed, regardless of the software or data type. This is enabled through the virtualization platform, the backbone of HSV (see diagram below). As the data is processed and stored, the virtualization platform applies advanced services to the data, invisibly in the background, that allows for better utilization, control and management of the content. Healthcare Storage Virtualization H E A LT H C A R E E N T E R P R I S E & C L I N I C A L A P P L I C AT I O N S B H M E D I S A F E Dynamic Data Protection Static Data Protection Enterprise & Clinical Apps B H M E D I S T O R E Medical Image Archiving Patient Records Archiving Scanned Document Archiving B H O F F I C E S T O R E General File Archiving Archiving SharePoint Archiving B R I D G E H E A D H E A LT H C A R E S T O R A G E V I R T U A L I Z AT I O N A D VA N C E D S E R V I C E S ADVANCED STORAGE UTILIZATION Compression De-duplication Retention Management DATA MIGRATION Multi-copy Support Storage Vendor Agnostic Availability During Migration CONTENT ACCESS Access Control Meta-data & Full Text Indexing Federated Search Compliant DATA PROTECTION & SECURITY Backup Application Data Multi-copy Protection Encryption & Authentication HEALTHCARE INTEGRATION CIFS & Web Services DICOM & HL7 Protocols XDS Interfaces S T O R A G E M E D I A Disk Cloud Tape Optical A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges 6

8 HSV Advanced Services As newly created or historical data flows through the virtualization platform of HSV, advanced services can be automatically applied (with no manual effort required) to the data before it is written on the selected storage destination, irrespective of media or device type. These services are designed to dramatically improve the utilization of the storage infrastructure, saving considerable cost and stretching the lifetime of those assets. These services include: Compression. In order to minimize file sizes prior to storage, HSV can apply lossy or lossless compression to any data, the latter being particularly important for medical images. As a rule of thumb, HSV can typically compress administrative data by 40% De-duplication. A huge issue for most healthcare organizations is the duplication of data, especially in relation to hospital administration and office data where multiple copies of the same files exist. HSV not only identifies these duplicated files, it stores only one copy, which is then referenced throughout. This process saves hospitals a considerable amount of storage space without compromising access to content Encryption. HSV applies AES 256-bit encryption when processing and storing data. This provides robust security to content, whether the data is held on or offline. Consequently, in the highly unlikely event of healthcare data falling into the wrong hands such as when an external disk is misplaced without the hospital s centrally held encryption key, the lost content is unreadable Content tiering. HSV content tiering allows data to be categorized and stored in the appropriate repositories and devices, based on administration policies around the age and value of the content. As a result, newer more dynamic data may reside on online storage, while older content may only exist on offline storage systems that have a dramatically lower total cost of ownership (TCO) Content verification. HSV ensures that each data item stored is subject to a unique verification check to guarantee that when that content is retrieved by a user from any media (live or offline), it is an exact copy of the correct, unaltered, original file Content indexing. With compliance and regulation now heavily affecting healthcare operations, it is essential that all hospital data, particularly as it pertains to patients, can be found as and where required. HSV provides intelligent indexing capabilities, in the form of meta-data management and full text indexing, making data from PACS, , office files etc. fully searchable Retention management. Based on user-defined criteria, HSV can manage a hospital s data retention policy. This ensures that compliance and regulatory requirements are met around the length of time data is stored, which varies across hospital departments, as well as managing the deletion of older content when required, which can save considerable storage space and money Legal hold. Complementing retention management, legal hold allows objects that are due to be removed from the system to be retained after their intended destruction date for legal purposes, should such circumstances arise Immutable storage. HSV can be configured to offer read-only capabilities, similar to those found in CD-R and DVD-R writers. This means that hospitals no longer have to invest in specific storage to achieve this functionality. HSV prescribes the specific data volumes such that users and applications can only add content and not delete it, or not delete content until it has reached the end of its retention period 7 BridgeHead Healthcare Storage Virtualization

9 Four Key Benefits of HSV 1. Improved storage utilization The HSV intelligent virtualization platform splits the direct linkage between applications and their respective storage. Consequently, healthcare organizations can break away from applications dictating data storage rules and implement unique data management policies. Whether a hospital chooses to store its data on a single hardware platform or across a mix of storage devices (whether live or offline), HSV underpins and supports either option and provides a comprehensive range of value-added advanced services to better optimize, protect and manage that information (see What is Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV)? on page 6). With HSV hospitals can apply policies to store their data how and where it makes the most sense, as opposed to simply maintaining it on expensive primary storage servers. This releases significant pressure from primary devices, while seamlessly redeploying static data onto more cost effective storage media such as secondary disks, optical drives, tape libraries or even in the cloud. 2. Trouble-free data migration The HSV platform has been designed to allow the controlled movement of data across storage devices, as and where required from hospital administration and , through to PACS data and DICOM medical images. As the data is processed and managed by the virtualization platform, it can be transferred transparently between storage devices. Consequently, should a hospital need to decommission a tired storage asset in favor of a newer facility, the HSV platform enables quick and seamless migrations of the data it owns while significantly reducing the burden on the IT department. As technology advances, healthcare IT professionals will constantly be reviewing and evolving their software infrastructure. Whether upgrading to more recent versions of applications or adopting new software technologies that rely on access to historical data, healthcare IT departments still must undergo the pain that accompanies migrations while trying to maintain their live environments and provide ongoing service levels to their users: the hospital staff. The virtualization platform of HSV provides a holistic view of a healthcare organization s data, irrespective of type or source, offering the appearance of a central repository that can be accessed via application programming interfaces (API), file system view or web portals (all provided as standard). As a result of the visibility and accessibility of this data, multiple applications can access the same data store in a secure manner, and future upgrades to software applications can be enabled. 3. Enhanced content access With HSV, the way that a hospital commits content into storage fundamentally changes. Rather than simply dumping content into a file share, HSV applies comprehensive meta-data and content indexing to the data in the background as it flows through the virtualization platform and is written into storage. Some healthcare data, such as DICOM images, contain their own meta-data descriptions within the file such as size, dimensions, bit depth, modality used to create the data, and equipment settings used to capture the image that are stored in the image file. HSV applies healthcare IT standards to not only identify and index the meta-data contained within the file, but also to apply full text indexing if no meta-data exists. It is the management of this meta-data and full text indexing that permits the virtualization platform to understand where the data is located and see the description of that data. 4. Better data protection and security The HSV platform supports the IT department s disaster recovery (DR) needs by ensuring that critical hospital data is secured on multiple media and replicated and/or distributed across locations, as required. This intelligent, secure storage infrastructure enables clinicians and other A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges 8

10 care staff to quickly access patient data and get on with the task of treatment, rather than spending excessive amounts of time running in all-too-familiar administrative circles. HSV further enhances a hospital s data protection requirements by addressing static content, which is typically more than 90 days old and has less than a 2% likelihood of being accessed again. Through virtualization, this data can be transferred onto a geographically dispersed and highly protected system that will fall outside of a hospital s primary storage backup activities. This massive reduction in data held on primary storage devices reduces backup times and makes existing DR capabilities far more effective. In addition to HSV services reducing the strain on hospitals existing backup processes by making primary repositories far smaller, they provide intelligent storage management that minimizes the threat of data loss. The HSV platform can be configured to automate the creation of multiple copies of data on storage systems that are in different geographical locations, yet still managed centrally. Consequently, this self-protecting data is very resilient to loss, even in the event of hardware failure, for example. But protecting data is more than just DR. Concerns about unauthorized access to confidential information, coupled with recent high-profile cases in which hospital data has been misplaced or stolen and the subsequent increased scrutiny by regulatory bodies means that healthcare IT professionals are under significant pressure to ensure their data is fully protected. The HSV platform can apply security levels, including encryption, to each individual piece of data stored, allowing access only to permitted individuals. Since HSV promotes the use of multiple and varied storage systems, it must also secure content that has been moved offsite as part of the DR strategy. The H in HSV Far more than data and storage management, HSV offers integration capabilities with healthcare applications that support DICOM, HL7 and XDS protocols, among other standards. Server virtualization has allowed hospitals to optimize the number of physical servers they own and manage, while storage virtualization enables healthcare IT departments to make the most efficient use of their storage assets, both now and in the future. As historically lean healthcare IT budgets continue to be taxed with new demands for storage to meet the rapid growth of electronic patient data, HSV can ensure these demands will not exceed IT s capacity to deliver. For the industry with the largest volume of data worldwide, there is much speculation that the data in question is also the least serviced. BridgeHead Software developed Healthcare Storage Virtualization to help healthcare IT professionals address their common data challenges. HSV is more than just IT it s about understanding healthcare data in relation to the applications that power hospitals today. More importantly, it s about understanding healthcare itself. HSV provides healthcare IT professionals power and control over intelligent healthcare data management and storage ecosystems that support their hospitals clinical and administrative functions, while providing a future-proof data and storage management infrastructure. Disaster recovery and data security go hand-in-hand since they are both geared toward minimizing the risks associated with managing content, losing data or allowing unauthorized access. HSV provides a platform by which a safe, robust and reliable data security and protection strategy can be created, automated and enforced, saving healthcare IT professionals time, effort and money. 9 BridgeHead Healthcare Storage Virtualization

11 Conclusion The healthcare IT landscape is rapidly changing and forward-thinking healthcare IT professionals need to explore new ways to overcome data and storage management challenges. Increasingly, they are pressured to construct an efficient, reliable and cost effective infrastructure that addresses their immediate obstacles, as well as their future evolution, growth and expansion. At the same time, they must maintain the high service levels that internal customers the clinicians and supporting hospital staff expect in support of the delivery of quality patient care. The following are trigger questions that healthcare IT professionals should consider when evaluating their current data management and storage infrastructure, as well as their future strategy: 99Will the current (or future) environment be able to support the sharply growing data volumes in a cost efficient manner? 99Will budgets be available in the future to continue to store this rapidly growing data on expensive disk? 99Do they currently have ownership of their data, or are they trapped by their obligations to their medical imaging and/or storage suppliers, for example? 99Can or will their healthcare data be shareable by multiple users and applications, regardless of vendor, platform or geography? 99Is healthcare data and media migration a painful process? 99Do they foresee continued investment in applications and hardware going forward that would require migrations to continue? 99In event of a disaster, disruption or outage, is there a recovery strategy that will assist in the resurrection of core systems and data, enabling the organization to resume service in a reasonable time frame to facilitate healthcare continuity? 99Is data protected from unauthorized access or fear of loss? 99Can users find and access all of the healthcare files they require, as and when they need them? 99Will their future plans help reduce the hospital s infrastructure, administration, energy and maintenance overhead, and in doing so, help decrease the IT carbon footprint and create a greener hospital environment? Healthcare Storage Virtualization is a new way of thinking a genuine alternative to the status quo. It s a construct that is underpinned by real technology, whereby a hospital s data management challenges can be addressed. While it s a destination to be achieved systematically over time, its benefits can be realized and demonstrated almost immediately. A New Way of Thinking About Your Data and Storage Management Challenges 10

12 UK BridgeHead Software Ltd. BridgeHead House 215 Barnett Wood Lane Ashtead, Surrey, KT21 2DF +44 (0) (0) fax USA BridgeHead Software, Inc. 400 West Cummings Park Suite 6050 Woburn, MA fax GERMANY BridgeHead Software Ltd. Kaiserwerther Strasse 215 D Düsseldorf - Ratingen Deutschland +49 (0) (0) fax 2010 BridgeHead Software