Roswell went live with its first replicated 20-terabyte MAS grid in 2006 as an archive for medical imaging. Its second 10-terabyte MAS unit, which retains research and DNA data, went live in March 2008. HP MAS provides a modular grid architecture that retains medical fixed content, including images, documents, charts and records. The inherent flexibility of HP MAS enables Roswell to manage the volume of image growth with a cost-effective long term archive.
“With this system, organizations can gain better control over data and archive it intelligently based on its clinical value, without having to direct manpower or resources to the task,” says Lisa Dali, Worldwide HP MAS Product Marketing Manager. “Using customer-defined information management (IM) rules, HP MAS moves information from tier to tier based on current business priorities. It provides centralized, automated storage that has dual site failover so information can always be ingested or retrieved, quickly and reliably.”
Research innovation
And Roswell is certainly achieving its goals since implementing HP MAS. Roswell projects a cumulative, five-year net benefit of $7,530,619—driven by increased IT and staff productivity, efficiency gains, and decreased downtime. The project will have an ROI of 107 percent, and a payback period of 22 months.*
“With the MAS, physicians can click on the system and retrieve the medical images they need to treat a patient in a matter of seconds, not hours,” says Ruh. “The data is there, it is archived according to how our users need to access it and it is always available, regardless of what may happen with the technology.”
Data persistence is another MAS benefit that is helping Roswell comply with government regulations like HIPAA. With the MAS system, data is available continuously so it can be accessed now or far into the future for diagnostic treatment and compliance initiatives.
“The administration is made up of doctors, so they understand that our data must persist, whether we need it tomorrow or 10 to 15 years from now,” says Tom Vaughan, Director of IT Infrastructure at Roswell. “The HP MAS provides upgradeable data persistence, which is critical to how we do business.”
Enhancing research
Research is another area that has benefited significantly from the introduction of intelligent archiving. The second MAS system, which went live in March 2008, will enable researchers across the organization to amalgamate information, review it and use it more effectively.
“Prior to having the MAS, our different labs worked in silos, which created duplication of efforts or poorly correlated discoveries,” says Vaughan. “With data mining, we can uncover a wealth of findings that weren’t available to us previously. Being able to tout this technology in recruiting new researchers is essential because they look for advanced capabilities. It becomes a critical differentiator for Roswell.”
Ruh highlights proudly that Roswell has not issued a medical charge for paper records since May 2006. “With our HP MAS systems, we have solved our storage, performance, availability and efficiency issues so that any user can access any type of data at any time. Those capabilities contribute to our vision— delivering optimum patient care and driving consistent research innovation,” says Ruh.
*”Roswell Park Cancer Institute Improves Storage Capacity and Performance, Builds Proactive Infrastructure, and Gains More than $7.5 Million in Benefits with HP Solution,” Case Study Forum, August 2007.
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Printable version
As a leading cancer care and research facility, Roswell must ensure that the vast amounts of data it collects, including medical images and business information, is available, accessible and protected. So when the organization began to outgrow its traditional storage solution, the IT team knew it was time to adopt technologies that could support growth and ongoing productivity.