Healthcare Industry Solution Brief

Meeting Todays Healthcare

Data Challenges

KEY BENEFITS

Reduces Costs and Complexity

Increase storage utilization as much
as 2x while decreasing space,
power, and cooling requirements.
Meet high-availability demands
with less complexity and lower
total cost of ownership.
Increases Flexibility
andEfficiency
Efficiently manage, deliver,
andstore patient information to
improve patient safety, increase
speed of diagnosis and treatment,
and enhance the exchange of
health information.
Accesses Patient Data Quickly
Rapidly access patient data
fromany storage system in
thehealthcare enterprise using
unified storage.
Enhances Security
Enhance healthcare data
permanence, accuracy, integrity,
and security to meet and
exceedthe most stringent
datarequirements.

The Challenge
Todays healthcare IT environment
isexperiencing dramatic change with
the advent of new technologies, cost
pressures, and increasing regulations.
With computers and mobile devices
quickly replacing traditional patient
charts, the number of electronic medical
records (EMRs) has skyrocketed. Also,
improvements in medical imaging and
new applications (for example, digital
pathology and 3D mammography) are
driving a need for more efficient ways
to access, manage, and store rapidly
growing data. Healthcare organizations
face a compelling need for solutions
that simplify the process of data
acquisition, ownership, and management.
They need to seamlessly integrate
growing volumes of clinical and IT
data.They seek the right information
atthe right place at the right time.
Changing dynamics in healthcare
provider and payer settings are also
shifting traditional data storage
purchasing patterns. For example,
payers and their vendors are collecting
and integrating new data from traditional
clinical sources, such as diagnostic
centers, labs, and pharmacy benefit
management (PBM) organizations.

1. TechTarget, Al Gallant, Storage for Electronic Health Care Systems. 2009

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In addition, connected health initiatives

are creating new data sources, devices,
and channels to manage. Wireless
devices can now transmit blood glucose
levels, blood pressure readings, and
heart rates to caregivers. This means
that thousands of readings for each
patient must be collected and stored.
Governing access to sensitive data
managing who, when, and how
confidential records may be retrieved
is a concern that payer and provider
communities share. Mobile devices
andconsumer connectivity create
newsecurity challenges. In addition,
increasingly stringent government
regulations such as HIPAA 5010, the
European Union (EU) Directive, and
others create compliance risks that you
need to address. For example, HIPAA and
some state laws now require retention of
data gathered on an infant until several
years after that infant becomes an adult
(for example, 25 years old in New
Hampshire). Retention of data-intensive
studies such as a computed tomography
study for an infant (~128MB) for this
period can challenge your healthcare
storage capabilities 1.

A reindex process that used to take 24 hours

nowtakes only four. SQL Server backups that
took more than two hours now complete in three
or four minutes. In the past, all of these processes
required taking the applications offline. The time
that we have gained back is time that our
administrators and healthcare users now use
toimprove patient care and safety.
Joseph Rowell
Enterprise Architect Solutions Manager, Sentara Healthcare

The U.S. Health Information Technology

for Economic and Clinical Health
(HITECH) Act and the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
incorporate meaningful use incentives.
These have caused a surge of new
electronic health records (EHRs),
computerized physician order entry
(CPOE) applications, and efforts toward
overall IT modernization. As a result,
point-of-care devices are proliferating,
increasing the amount of patient data and
the need for efficient storage solutions.
NetApp Solutions
To help you address the concerns and
risk associated with storing and managing medical data today, NetApp has
designed powerful, integrated storage
solutions that deliver fast, secure, reliable
access for healthcare organizations.
Asa leading provider of data storage
and management solutions, we have
installed solutions in over 3,000
healthcare organizations around
theworld. In addition to reducing
operational costs, we build on our
significant industry experience.
Weenhance the secure exchange of
patient information and theintegrity of
medical records, medical images, and
other healthcare data. Top healthcare
solution providers certify NetApp to
deliver flexibility and efficiency within
hospital IT infrastructures. We can
helpyou improve your workflows
toimprove patient care.

As an innovation leader, NetApp partners

with industry providers such as Agfa,
Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, Fujifilm, GE
Healthcare, InterSystems, McKesson,
Meditech, Merge, and Siemens to
helpyou:
Protect and manage valuable and
critical patient data such as scans,
x-rays, real-time monitoring
information, and extensive analysis
ofmedical conditions
Reduce overall storage and management costs
Gain efficiencies of scale while leveraging existing solutions as the needs
for picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) storage expand
beyond the confines of radiology
Introduce new data entry and
datamanagement solutions to
accommodate increasingly large
andsophisticated diagnostic images,
EMRs, and EHRs
Support the high-availability demands
of EHRs and health information
exchanges (HIEs) with less complexity
and a lower TCO
Secure data across the connected
healthcare continuum, with protection
of data at rest, data in transit, and
data in use, using encryption and
other means

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Take full advantage of server and

storage virtualization
Install secure, interactive connectivity
to affiliated, remotely connected
medical care facilities, imaging
centers, health networks, and
integrated health exchanges to
support distributed clinical decision
making and collaboration
Enhance continuity of care through
24x7x365 access to critical healthcare
data through sophisticated solutions
for restoration data backup and
disaster recovery
Application Support
Leading healthcare application providers
work closely with NetApp to deliver
integrated solutions. For example,
NetApp integrates with EMR and
EHRpartner solutions to grow storage
capacity. These solutions also support
the need for a hospital infrastructure
that delivers accessibility, high
availability, and scalability. NetApp also
partners with leading PACS vendors to
deliver fast, simple, scalable, and reliable
storage and affordable image sharing
and archiving solutions.
In addition, we support hundreds of
additional applications that clinical
andnonclinical systems use. Based on
thin provisioning, multiple applications
share a single pool of on-demand
storage, often achieving 20% to 33%

Our decision to invest in NetApp was based on

economics. NetApp innovation has enabled us
toreduce our data center footprint and capitalize
on other IT efficiencies that have contributed to
significant cost savings. By choosing NetApp, we
made a sound investment that will serve us well
into the future.
Stephen W. Clark, FACHE
Chief Information Officer, Albemarle Health

savings. Also, NetApp Snapshot

helps you save more than 80% on
storage space by more efficiently
managing frequent copies of your
databases, while providing shorter
recovery point objectives. NetApp
FlexClone helps you more efficiently
replicate multiple copies of system
environments that you need for
application development, testing,
andsupport.
Compliance and Security
State and federal regulatory mandates
that affect patient care and privacy
include HIPAA, the EU Directive, and
others. NetApp helps you reduce
compliance risk through improved
recordkeeping, monitoring, and
oversight. NetApp SnapLock software
helps you meet government standards
for retaining, protecting, and accessing
regulated and reference data with a
flexible, integrated, cost-effective
solution. The compatibility of SnapLock
with the Version 3 Reference Information
Model (RIM) gives you a logical,
standards-based view of your
healthcare information.
Backup, Recovery, and Archiving
As an industry leader in backup and
restoration solutions, NetApp provides
complete disaster recovery and file
restoration services based on our
powerful portfolio of Snap solutions.
NetApp Snapshot software is the

riginal and most functional

o
pointintime technology. It helps
youprotect healthcare data with
noperformance impact and minimal
consumption of storage space. Our
on-board deduplication of primary and
secondary data eliminates duplicate
data while maintaining data integrity.
This can save you up to 95% on
fullbackups.
You can also automate and simplify
data management processes with
SnapManager . At the same time,
minimize operator intervention for
remote data backup and self-service
recovery. NetApp provides double-
parity RAID to protect against double
disk failures without disruption and
provides hot-swappable disk capabilities.
RAID-DP provides you a level of
protection against dual drive failure
toenhance continuity of critical care.
When used in tandem with NetApp
SyncMirror for remote data replication,
fault tolerance exceeds that of a RAID 5
implementation with superior cost and
performance benefits. To enhance
business continuity, NetApp can also
help you establish data repositories
atmultiple data centers across your
organization.
Consolidating Medical Data
Most healthcare organizations run
applications on several different
systems and file servers. This can
makeaccessing and managing data
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both challenging and expensive. But

with NetApp, you can unify these
vastcollections of patient data
computerized physician order entry
(CPOE) records, pharmaceutical
records, radiology images, PACS
intoa single, manageable framework.
NetApp solutions such as fabricattached storage (FAS) support
ouradvanced features across all
common protocols:
Common Internet File System (CIFS)
Network File System (NFS)
Fibre Channel (FC)
Internet Small Computer System
Interface (iSCSI)
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
You can also use different storage tiers:
FC disk for maximum performance or
SATA disk for lower costs. NetApp also
offers StorageGRID to help manage
petabyte-scale distributed medical
record repositories.
Virtualization and Cloud Solutions
Virtualizing databases offers you a
mechanism to manage large volumes
ofmedical information, increase asset
utilization, speed application recovery,
and reduce costs. NetApp helps you
scale your storage investment as
needed, adding capabilities with little
orno downtime. The result is a data
storage and management environment
that can better meet your dynamic
business requirements.

With flexible NetApp solutions, you can

manage todays data while planning for
the future through server and desktop
virtualization, automated storage tiering,
and multi-tenant and cloud solutions.
These can help you streamline IT
capabilities, improve security, and
boost business resilience.
NetApps easy-to-manage virtual
desktop infrastructures (VDIs) give you
reliable, secure access to critical data,
images, and files for up to thousands
ofusers any time, anywhere. Your
mobile and distributed medical workers
increasingly need access to sensitive
patient information using mobile
devices. With NetApp partners such as
VMware and Citrix, you can coordinate
and streamline workflows through
virtualized desktops to improve
productivity and efficiency.
Secure Multi-Tenancy Solutions
Traditionally, guaranteeing application
isolation requires dedicated, isolated
hardware. Secure multi-tenancy
enables you to partition a virtualized,
shared infrastructure. Data is securely
isolated, and workload performance is
maintained. NetApp has partnered with
leading technology vendors to create
aunique enterprise cloud architecture
that includes all server, storage, and
networking hardware and software to
facilitate sharing, reuse, and dynamic
resource allocation. Weve brought
together years of combined experience
to create a multi-tenant environment
inwhich separate applications or
customers can share the same server,
storage, and networking infrastructure
with complete isolation so sensitive
information is not compromised.

Distributed Medical Information

Because of expansions (for example,
accountable care organizations),
mergers, and acquisitions, healthcare
organizations might need to integrate
additional or legacy information servers.
You might need this to grow your
healthcare system; accommodate
additional clinics or pharmacies; or tie
in EMRs, EHRs, HIEs, and Nationwide
Health Information Network (NHIN)
applications. With NetApp, you can
replicate data to multiple healthcare
facilities with disk-to-disk backup. This
requires fewer support personnel and
lowers cost. NetApp SnapMirror and
SnapVault can save you up to 95%
instorage space. At the same time,
StorageGRID gives you scalability for
large sets of medical data.
Managing Large Pools of Patient
Data Across Healthcare Facilities
For healthcare organizations that
depend on access to patient-critical
and mission-critical data and imaging
studies, NetApp StorageGRID protects
and preserves fixed-content assets
over their lifetime. Through automation
and intelligent data management,
NetApp StorageGRID provides
consistent, reliable access to data over
many years. It does this by delivering
superior data protection, business
continuity, automated disaster recovery,
and multisite access in disk and tape
storage environments.

Why NetApp?
Todays leading healthcare provider and
payer organizations rely on NetApp to
help store patient data and medical
images reliably, efficiently, and affordably.
We help you deliver high-quality patient
care by providing powerful, integrated
hardware and software solutions that
enable fast, cost-effective, scalable
storage. Drawing upon our many years
of experience, leading healthcare
application providers collaborate
closely with NetApp as certified
solutionpartners.
Get Started
At NetApp, we help you succeed by
becoming a storage provider with the
solutions, partnerships, and support
that todays healthcare organizations
need to deliver the best care. Get
started by contacting NetApps
healthcare IT team today.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage
and data management solutions that
deliver outstanding cost efficiency and
accelerate business breakthroughs.
Discover our passion for helping
companies around the world go
further,faster at www.netapp.com.
Go further, faster

2011 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.
Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, FlexClone, RAID-DP, SnapLock, SnapManager,
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