Big Data is driving new and innovative digital workflows that are fostering new ways of working and transforming how patient care is delivered.
To provide an overview of this innovation, Arkivum has published a White Paper explaining how a managed storage service provides the answers to current problems facing healthcare operators.
Entitled Managing Big Data: Reaping The Rewards, the 16-page document explains why it is ‘easier than you think’ to implement and how it can help to substantially reduce costs, maintain compliance, and take away concerns around back-up systems.
Chapters include a look at NHS budgets and the role of technology moving forwards, digital pathology, disruptive workflows, and the challenges of managing data.
IT managers are facing huge challenges in managing the vast volumes of new data that these processes are generating, and are looking to managed storage services that free them from dealing with this specialist long-term task, and solve the back-up problem in the process
It states: “The UK healthcare sector, and the NHS in particular, is faced with huge demands to reduce costs and increase e¬fficiency. Technology is seen as an enabler of change and is being adopted in a wide range of areas.
“Specialist managed data storage services are positively disrupting how Big Data is being secured; and they’re reducing costs, meeting NHS and healthcare compliance requirements, and delivering the long-term efficiency benefi ts that enable digital workfl ows to flourish.”
Pathology is an example of where the NHS is already undergoing disruptive change and where new digital processes and introducing challenging to old ways of working. In doing so, they are also introducing new opportunities through Big Data.
The white paper states: “Managers of digital pathology labs are benefiting from digital workfl ows that are fostering innovation in how pathology practices are transforming patient care.
“IT managers are facing huge challenges in managing the vast volumes of new data that these processes are generating, and are looking to managed storage services that free them from dealing with this specialist long-term task, and solve the back-up problem in the process.
Specialist managed data storage services are positively disrupting how Big Data is being secured; and they’re reducing costs, meeting NHS and healthcare compliance requirements, and delivering the long-term efficiency benefi ts that enable digital workfl ows to flourish
“Finance officers, working in a ‘more for less’ culture and looking for economical and cost-effective solutions, are also going to benefit from using services that offer predictable costs over very-long timescales - up to 25 years - with OpEx and/or CapEx purchasing models.
“Even a modest digital pathology lab with one small slide scanner will generate over 15TB of data per year and storing, managing and securing this volume of data over decade-long timescales is a challenge driven by compliance, security, cost and data integrity requirements.”
It adds: “With Government cuts being forced onto an already-stretched NHS, trusts need to implement radical digital and technology-led strategies in order to reduce unnecessary spending. This includes the use of digital applications to reduce paper records, save space, facilitate data re-purposing and so on, as well as finding better and more cost-effective ways to store all the data being generated.
Commenting on the next steps, the document offers a number of recommendations, including:
- Save costs by moving infrequently used data off expensive primary storage
- Get static data into archive storage to ensure it’s safe on decade-level timescales - and to save on back-up costs
- Make sure you have an archiving policy and regular archiving activity to keep your house in order
- Make sure the archive has online copies for easy access and offline/off-site copies for disaster recovery
- Ensure there is a designated individual with data archiving responsibility
- Regularly review the policy, processes and data storage solution against compliance requirements (access control, integrity etc)
Click here to access the paper in full.
