healthcare A Cloud Storage Solution for Unstructured data Digital Record Center for Medical Images
Digital Record center for medical images A Climate that Demands a New Storage ApproACh Today, healthcare providers are facing the perfect storm, marked by explosive data growth, tighter regulations and reduced access to capital. With these changes comes not only great progress, but also challenges in need of modern solutions. Healthcare providers are seeing exponential growth of digital information, from medical images to the Electronic Health Record (EHR). The volume alone has multiplied at incredible rates, while file sizes and the use of new modalities continue to grow. The combination has created a myriad of storage cost, protection and management challenges. Beyond the sheer volume challenges, PACS and related data are often trapped in storage silos and locked to the applications that created them. This makes it difficult to move, share and access that information, ultimately impeding patient care. Regulations are becoming more stringent relative to privacy and security breaches and disaster preparedness, adding to the management challenge. HIPAA: A New Era Emerges With the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and modifications to HIPAA, cloudbased solutions must address required security and access controls. Iron Mountain s long-term archiving and disaster recovery solution safeguards protected health information appropriately, complies with the provisions of HIPAA, and enables you to recover rapidly in the event of a disaster. Finally, with the recent economic volatility, budgetary cutbacks are forcing tough prioritization, from disaster recovery and archiving solutions to the ongoing migration to the EHR. Choosing between revenue generation and patient care versus infrastructure investments presents an unprecedented set of factors. Challenges and Complexity Drive Towards Change In the face of these changes, medical imaging data protection is suffering. Traditional backup windows are shrinking as volume increases. Often static content consumes the backup process, causing inefficiency and recovery risks. Page 2
Healthcare providers may be avoiding the possibility that, if tested, their quickly aging disaster recovery solution won t meet reasonable Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). The cycle quickly becomes difficult to manage, as IT departments buy more and more storage capacity. IT staffs feel the constant burden of juggling software and maintenance issues, media migration, hardware obsolescence, and the ultimate complexity of their environment. Both backup and archiving tend to be compromised, with neither serving their purpose particularly well. The Age of Cloud Storage Given the explosive growth in medical image archiving and backup, traditional storage methods are simply not feasible. Cloud storage as a truly viable option has finally arrived. Cloud storage uses a pay-per-use model, offering on-demand, flexible storage. Industry analysts now report that it is particularly useful for secondary storage. make the Most of Your Storage Tiers Iron Mountain s cloud storage solution naturally forces storage tiers to right-size. In many cases, expensive Tier 1 storage has been expanded, compensating for a lack of rapid access in Tier 2 and Tier 3. By paring down Tier 1 storage without compromising timely access to data, you get the best of both worlds: improved accessibility and lower storage costs. Since most studies are infrequently accessed after 12 to 24 months, Tier 1 storage should be reserved for your most recent studies requiring the greatest accessibility. With our service, you can better manage other data by placing some Tier 2 storage onsite, or by moving Tier 2 and Tier 3 storage offsite. Optimizing Storage CapACity Most internal storage systems utilize less than 60 percent of their capacity. Overbuying storage capacity in anticipation of volume is wasteful. Iron Mountain s cloud storage provides for unlimited capacity, but on a pay-asyou-go basis the best of all worlds. As a variable cost, you can operate with 100 percent capacity utilization for optimal cost effectiveness. Plus, having capacity on-demand virtually eliminates the planning, procurement, deployment and migration burden. The explosion of medical image storage has created an inflection point. Traditional methods for managing storage likely won t work. The age of cloud storage is here; it is now secure, accessible and cost-effective, provided you select a reputable provider such as Iron Mountain. Brian Babineau, Enterprise Strategy Group PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL COST Storage Administration Storage Hardware Debunking the Myth of Declining Storage Costs A common misconception is that as hardware costs decline, so too will overall costs. Today, hardware acquisition is only 25 percent of the overall cost of storage (as shown in Percentage of Total Cost chart). The true figures show that storage may become less expensive to acquire, but the cost to manage storage is exploding as a function of volume. Gaining efficiencies in the remaining 75 percent of costs delivers real savings. Facilities & Power Service & Support Storage Software Source: Frost & Sullivan (April 2008) Digital Record Center for Medical Images / 3
ESTIMATED 5-YEAR MEDICAL ARCHIVE STORAGE COSTS TypiCAl Cost Savings Model Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) modeled the potential cost savings a typical healthcare provider could achieve through Iron Mountain s solution, with results ranging from 60 percent to 240 percent (See Estimated 5-Year Medical Archive Storage Costs chart). Iron Mountain DRCMI Without With Replication Replication Onsite Storage Solution The five-year cost model assumed: 200,000 studies completed in the first year. 3 percent annual study increase for four years. Additional 3 terabyte backfile archive. Study size increased 3 percent per year. Two copies of the medical images stored in two separate data centers. Source: Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) (April 2009) Where do the Savings & Reduced Complexity Come From? Lower Total Cost of Ownership Reduced Complexity No capital and bandwidth purchases. Reduce the complexity of 100 percent capacity utilization. managing backups, storage systems, migrations and preservation. Right-sizing storage tiers. Vendor-neutral storage provides Eliminating backup software, licensing and management. Eradicating tape. maximum flexibility and independence, consolidation of storage, and the end of migrations. Free up IT resources. Backup and archiving solutions Reclaiming data center floor space. are simpler as a combined service but entirely uncompromised. Eliminating power and cooling and other operating costs. Built-in HIPAA compliance. A Better way to back Up and Recover Iron Mountain completely automates the backup process and allows customers to meet their recovery time and recovery point objectives. Data is immediately and seamlessly moved offsite without any manual involvement. Customers receive nearly the same value as high availability mirrored solutions, but at a fraction of the cost. For those operating in a tape environment, our service puts an end to running backups, managing tapes, drives, backup software and the like. In the end, it s all about recoverability. Iron Mountain has unmatched experience helping organizations recover from actual disasters. We have the resources and procedures in place to move large volumes of data in short timeframes. 4
Storage versus Archive traditional storage Reliability No data validation or self-healing Risk of data loss Separation of facilities requires additional hardware and networking Redundancy lacking between disk shelves Security Designed as File System storage, no inherent security and encryption SCAlability Expanding arrays requires expertise, and maximum size is limited Cost Capital expense Manual data migration Expansion planned before 80% capacity, utilization less than 60% Power/cooling/space usage considerations Experience dictates ease of implementation PACS must support data replication cloud storage with Iron Mountain Intelligent fault tolerance and redundancy Content-addressable storage Recoverability Redundancy on all components Standardized processes dramatically increase reliability Strong encryption throughout lifecycle High-security facilities HIPAA-compliant solution Easy to add additional storage Operating expense Migration is automatic Near ideal capacity utilization at all times Limited power/cooling/space usage in your data centers Easy, low impact implementation Minimal impact to PACS DiSASter Recovery and Long-Term Archiving all in one Iron Mountain delivers a unique solution in the marketplace: solving two complex problems at once. We know that our clients have separate, distinct disaster recovery and archiving requirements but may address these needs by using their disaster recovery copy as an archive or vice versa. As a result, their solution compromises both and satisfies neither. Our service is unique because it operates as both a disaster recovery and archiving solution simultaneously one infrastructure with no compromises. This combined service allows us to bring unparalleled savings and uncompromised simplicity. Vendor Neutral Archiving Because we can offer a totally vendor neutral archive, we can consolidate multiple PACS silos and liberate your data from your PACS application. With this service, you can share patient information across hospital systems, add new imaging applications that may not be supported by PACS vendors, and drive down your expenses through better storage management. Moving forward, you can effectively control your own imaging data and end migrations. Migration and Preservation With Iron Mountain s solution and the cloud, you ll also eliminate the constant cycle of hardware refreshes and costly data migrations. And, because we constantly upgrade our technology, you can rest assured that your data is preserved over time, yet readily accessible in the event that you need it. DiSASter Recovery and Archiving in a Single Service DiSASter Recovery Benefits Continuous, automated backup. Best value for meeting your RTO and RPO. Timely return of your data. Geographically dispersed protection in our secure, underground data bunkers. Archiving Benefits On-demand retrieval through your PACS application. Lower total cost of ownership, leveraging a pay-per-use model. 100 percent capacity utilization. Eliminate capital outlays. Digital Record Center for Medical Images / 5
Flexible Solution Architecture Whether you are a small provider needing a better way to manage and access a growing archive, a large provider seeking a way to reduce the complexity of your systems, or anything in between the two, Iron Mountain has a solution designed to meet your needs. Hybrid Cloud Storage. A typical scenario may be the Hybrid Cloud Storage solution (see below), an ideal solution if you have large data sets and require local access to your archive. CT MRI MAMM CURRENT IMAGING ENVIRONMENT e PACS STORAGE ARCHIVE u TIER 2 ARCHIVE r HIGH AVAILABILITY GATEWAY IRON MOUNTAIN DATA BUNKER 220 i GATEWAY PET VPN CARDIOLOGY TIER 1 ARCHIVE TYPICAL CAPACITY 6-24 MONTHS DIAGNOSTIC STATION t STORAGE NODE DIGITAL RECORD CENTER FOR MEDICAL IMAGES e In this set-up, the service seamlessly integrates with your existing onsite PACS as a remote storage archive. r An onsite appliance, or gateway, stores modest volumes of recent studies, acting primarily as a cache to regulate the secure flow of images to Iron Mountain s remote data center. Our high-availability gateway configuration provides greater fault tolerance and increased business continuity protection. t A storage node, installed with the gateway, provides additional onsite storage and can be infinitely scaled. u Your onsite Tier 2 storage can be eliminated or repurposed. i A second copy of the patient information is stored in the medical image archive offsite at Iron Mountain s secure, underground data bunker. To maximize the benefits of this solution, you can use it to store any unstructured data across your entire enterprise, realizing further cost savings and accessibility relief beyond your medical images.
Customer CASe Study Other Iron Mountain options include the Mirrored Cloud and Hybrid Cloud2 solutions. Mirrored Cloud. With Mirrored Cloud, you get timely access to your most current studies stored in our onsite gateway. We also store two online copies of your medical images offsite in our highly secure, geographically separated underground data bunkers. Hybrid Cloud2. Hybrid Cloud2 is ideal if you are looking for superior protection. This option provides cost-effective, onsite image archiving, with two copies of your images stored offsite in our highly secure, geographically separated underground data bunkers. This solution works best for customers seeking local access to their medical images, with additional redundancy for improved disaster recovery. A Cloud Storage Solution for Unstructured data Iron Mountain s Digital Record Center for Medical Images provides a unique solution, combining industry-leading disaster recovery and longterm archiving. You ll see a lower total cost of ownership and benefit from a better approach to archiving, backup, and recovery and reap the rewards of reduced complexity in your environment. Most importantly, you are freed from managing your secondary storage and can focus on your core mission: generating revenue and providing outstanding patient care. Cloud Storage in Action Scenario: A two-hospital health system had two data centers, 500 miles apart, connected by dedicated bandwidth. The system generated 12 terabytes of data per year with a 25 terabyte archive. Solution: Eliminating the dedicated bandwidth, and combining Tier 2 and Tier 3 storage in the cloud, the provider lowered costs and continued to manage their Tier 1 storage onsite. Results: The system expects to lower costs by 51 percent the first year, projecting a savings of $2.2 million over five years. Digital Record Center for Medical Images / 7
745 Atlantic Avenue Boston, MA 02111 800 899 IRON (4766) ironmountain.com US-HIS-BR-022610-002 About Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) provides information management services that help organizations lower the costs, risks and inefficiencies of managing their physical and digital data. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain manages billions of information assets, including backup and archival data, electronic records, document imaging, business records, secure shredding, and more, for organizations around the world. Visit the company Web site at www.ironmountain.com for more information. 2010 Iron Mountain Incorporated. All rights reserved. Iron Mountain, the design of the mountain, and Digital Record Center are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.