BOSTON, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Iron Mountain Incorporated
(NYSE: IRM), a provider of information protection and storage services,
announced it is collaborating with HP to offer mid-sized hospitals and imaging
centers a new service for protecting and storing their rising volume of
diagnostic images.
Iron Mountain's new Digital Record Center(TM) for Medical Images is a
disaster recovery and long-term archiving service that is powered by the HP
Medical Archive solution (MAS) and leverages Iron Mountain's Storage-as-a-
Service expertise. The result is a solution for healthcare providers, who must
deliver on-demand access to diagnostic images, comply with federal laws for
handling patient data and reduce long-term storage costs.
As a managed service, the Digital Record Center for Medical Images
provides secure, off-site, back-up protection without requiring hospitals and
imaging centers to set aside storage systems, data center space, staff and
capital investments. This helps medical institutions to reduce their storage
costs and allows them to redirect resources to clinical operations.
"We are applying the same Storage-as-a-Service formula for medical imaging
that we've successfully applied to other industries," said Ken Rubin, senior
vice president of strategic alliances for Iron Mountain. "We can offer
hospitals and imaging centers better disaster recovery capability and lower
their storage costs versus in-house systems."
Powering Iron Mountain's latest storage service is HP MAS, an industry-
specific solution for long-term archival storage of medical fixed content,
consisting of factory-integrated HP disk storage and servers, as well as
indexing and policy management software. HP recently made significant
enhancements to HP MAS (3.0) to help healthcare providers improve patient
care; facilitate regulatory compliance; increase storage flexibility; lower
storage costs; and improve operational efficiencies. HP MAS is currently
installed at more than 175 healthcare institutions in 15 countries.
"Working with Iron Mountain, we are able to extend the HP Medical Archive
solution to an even greater number of healthcare providers," said Robin
Purohit, vice president and general manager, Information Management, Software,
HP. "This is another key step to strengthen our commitment in providing
solutions tailored for organizations of all sizes within the healthcare
industry."
Iron Mountain and HP will jointly market and sell two service offerings
within the Digital Record Center for Medical Images. The Disaster Recovery
Service provides healthcare organizations with a secure, off-site copy of
imaging studies and allows timely data recovery in the event of a disaster at
the customer site. The Disaster Recovery and Long-term Archiving Service
enables customers to eliminate on-site storage and associated costs by
providing two protected and replicated copies in Iron Mountain's secure
underground data bunkers in Western Pennsylvania and Missouri. With both
choices, customers pay as they store, maximizing cost effectiveness by
eliminating inefficiencies associated with data center space and management
overhead.
"The Digital Record Center for Medical Images is a simple solution that
fulfills all of our medical imaging needs for both archival storage and
disaster recovery," said Thuan Nguyen, IT director, Seattle Radiologists. "Now
we can access our images as if they were on-site, but without the cost and
responsibility of maintaining a secure and scalable storage system."
Diagnostic imaging is on the rise. One recent estimate from National
Imaging Associates predicts imaging procedures in the United States will
increase in 2008 to 600 million. This growth, coupled with the expanding file
size of images, challenges hospitals and imaging centers to control storage
costs and comply with disaster recovery and data storage guidelines like those
required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
"The medical imaging marketplace is rapidly evolving," said Chris Connor,
senior research analyst at Health Industry Insights, an IDC company.
"Historically, only medical institutions with large capital budgets had the
resources to maintain a scalable, digital-image archive. But as the use of
diagnostic imaging expands and images exceed in-house storage capacities,
institutions of all sizes need the same capabilities to archive and safeguard
their images."
The Digital Record Center for Medical Images complements Iron Mountain's
current portfolio of health information solutions. Healthcare providers trust
Iron Mountain to solve their unique and evolving challenges of simultaneously
managing both physical and digital records, while ensuring timely access to
patient records and complying with the ever-growing patient privacy
regulations. As healthcare providers transition to electronic medical records,
only Iron Mountain can securely manage their analog films, protect and store
their diagnostic images with the Digital Record Center for Medical Images, and
bridge the physical and digital worlds with X-ray on Demand, a film conversion
service.
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) helps organizations around the
world reduce the costs and risks associated with information protection and
storage. The Company offers comprehensive records management and data
protection solutions, along with the expertise and experience to address
complex information challenges such as rising storage costs, litigation,
regulatory compliance and disaster recovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain is
a trusted partner to more than 100,000 corporate clients throughout North
America, Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit
the Company's Web site at www.ironmountain.com.
SOURCE Iron Mountain Incorporated
CONTACT:
Dan O'Neill of Iron Mountain, +1-617-535-2966
dan.oneill@ironmountain.com
or
Kristen Georgian of Weber Shandwick,
+1-617-520-7042
kristen.georgian@webershandwick.com
Web site:
http://www.ironmountain.com