New retention management capability for vendor neutral archive and
cloud-based storage relieves pressures of shrinking storage capacity and
regulatory compliance
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2012--
Iron
Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), the information management
company, today announced that the Texas
Regional Medical Center (TRMC) has chosen Iron Mountain’s vendor
neutral archive (VNA) and cloud
storage solution to manage its CT scans, MRIs, X-rays and other
diagnostic image volume. The Dallas-based for-profit hospital will
implement Iron Mountain’s VNA to lower overall medical data storage
costs, provide caregivers better access to images, and improve disaster
recovery by moving data securely offsite. Iron Mountain also announced
the addition of new retention management functionality to its VNA to
help hospitals identify and properly archive or destroy obsolete medical
data.
Texas Regional Medical Center: Lowering storage costs, focusing on
patient care
Like other hospitals, the Texas Regional
Medical Center views and stores medical images through Picture Archiving
Communication Systems (PACS). These systems generate massive amounts of
data, driven by higher-resolution images and the popularity of imaging
as a diagnostic tool. Often, the data is stored across multiple
departments, each with its own PACS for storing a specific type of
image. This network of PACS creates silos that trap information and
inhibit physicians from viewing a patient’s full medical history,
forcing hospital technology leaders to manage expensive and complex
processes for storing and sharing medical image data. And, because
hospitals update or replace their PACS every few years, they are forced
to migrate images from one PACS to the next.
The Texas Regional Medical Center implemented Iron Mountain’s VNA and
cloud-based archiving solution to help them address their medical
imaging data growth, while also helping them better protect their data
in the event of disaster by moving the information offsite. This will
enable TRMC to reduce the cost and complexity of managing that data
while meeting HIPAA compliance requirements for disaster recovery and
business continuity. Additionally, they plan to use the VNA to help them
prepare for the eventual challenges of system interoperability and data
retention, both of which will become more acute challenges as TRMC grows
and expands its footprint of clinical operations.
“As a for-profit hospital, our technology investments must provide
efficiency and cost-savings, solving our current and future needs while
also helping to ensure a higher quality of patient care,” said
Rob
McDonald
, CIO of Texas Regional Medical Center. “When we started looking
for a technology solution for our medical imaging data, we had a
specific agenda: Choose a partner capable of growing with us and
handling our storage, access, compliance and data retention needs. Iron
Mountain fits perfectly as a partner with the capability and expertise
to help us bridge the gap between now and the future. Their solution
solves our storage and compliance needs, while ensuring we have the most
cost-effective and efficient solution that frees up our staff to focus
on patient care.”
New retention and lifecycle management functionality: Relieve the
pressures of storage & compliance
The massive growth of
medical data brings the additional challenge of straining storage and
management capacity, complicated by regulatory requirements for
archiving and protecting this data, also known as information lifecycle
management. The solution is to archive or delete obsolete information –
data that exceeded its “retention period” and no longer needed to
satisfy regulatory (e.g. HIPAA) or clinical care requirements. To
address retention and lifecycle management, hospitals must have an
understanding of their legal and clinical requirements as well as the
capability to manage the retention and destruction of date based on
retention policies. Iron Mountain’s VNA manages the archiving process
and data is tiered so that inactive data is stored using more economical
storage systems over time; destruction is managed based on policies
created within the VNA to destroy data that has exceeded the required
retention period. And, in addition to encouraging customers to use these
retention capabilities in the VNA, Iron Mountain also provides
consulting services to help healthcare organizations develop the
policies needed to effectively utilize these capabilities.
Iron Mountain’s vendor neutral archive provides healthcare organizations
with an enterprise-wide repository for storing, accessing and managing
medical images and other patient data. Customers like TRMC use it to
consolidate medical imaging studies and patient data – traditionally
stored in departmental-level archives found in radiology, cardiology and
other areas of the hospital – into a single archive. Additionally, they
can leverage the solution’s data retention management capabilities to
delete inactive data when no longer required for clinical or compliance
reasons. The net impact is lower costs, enhanced image sharing ability,
better reliability and security, and ultimately improved patient care.
“The typical hospital system’s archive data grows at a rate of more than
40 percent year-over-year, straining storage and management resources,”
said
Ken
Rubin
, senior vice president and general manager, healthcare
services for Iron Mountain. “Providers are looking for more control
over their information while also looking to reduce the cost and
complexity of managing this data. Our VNA allows them to liberate their
data from their PACS to solve data sharing and access issues, removing
the burden of managing their archiving and disaster recovery functions
to focus on delivering a higher quality of patient care. The new
retention management capability enables hospitals to substantially
reduce their data storage costs even further. Providers like TRMC
recognize that our single solution can solve these complex challenges,
which is the reason why our VNA and cloud services have grown over 100
percent for each of the past three years.”
For more information on the Iron Mountain vendor neutral archive and
Iron Mountain Healthcare Services, visit Iron Mountain at the 2012 HIMSS
Annual Conference & Exhibition in booth 2558 or click here.
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. The Company’s solutions enable customers to protect and
better use their information—regardless of its format, location or
lifecycle stage—so they can optimize their business and ensure proper
recovery, compliance and discovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain
manages billions of information assets, including business records,
electronic files, medical data, emails and more for organizations around
the world. Visit www.ironmountain.com
or follow the company on Twitter @IronMountain for more information.
Source: Iron Mountain Incorporated
Iron Mountain
Christian T. Potts, 617-535-8721
christian.potts@ironmountain.com
or
Weber
Shandwick
Kristen Georgian, 617-520-7042
kgeorgian@webershandwick.com