Data Movement Across Borders

While a cloud service provider may be located within the country of origin, some of the cost saving benefits that can be realized by customers are due to the economies of scale that the service provider attains by sharing the infrastructure between multiple customers. This may mean that a cloud provider backs up or replicates data at a secondary site that does not reside within the original country–think Belgian hospitals’ local cloud provider who backs up data into their German data center. In many countries this would violate their privacy regulations and can be quite a complex and expensive problem to address, particularly if there is a breach of patient information. Healthcare organizations need to ensure that their data does not move across borders that it is not allowed to.

Data Migration

It would be naive to think that a facility would stay with one cloud provider forever. Cloud providers are free to manage their infrastructure as they see fit—a benefit for facilities who don’t want to worry about this infrastructure component. But some caution is advised. Customers need to know that their cloud provider is using accepted standards to store data. Proprietary mechanisms of storage will make migration very difficult in the future. An understanding of the cloud provider’s infrastructure and contractual agreements that ensure not only the ability to remove data but also assistance in migrating this data should be considered a high priority for any organization looking to adopt the cloud.

Ownership of the Data

This has been highlighted as a concern, but it should be clearly defined. Patient data belongs to the customer and the patient. The cloud provider is providing a service - network, storage, application, infrastructure, resources - but they have no claim to the data. The regulatory constraints should support this, in that patient data is subject to privacy and security laws such that a cloud provider could not, for example, sell access to the data to a marketing company. The customer is entitled to move, manipulate, change and otherwise remove data from the provider as desired. It is worth having this written into the contract so that all parties are clear.

Privacy and Security Compliance

Many organizations are reluctant to give up control of their patient information as there are certain risks that may suddenly become beyond their control. A breach of privacy falls to the healthcare organization to manage, and a cloud provider becomes an entity that threatens that control. There are many aspects to mitigate these risks:

A. Contractual compliance with stiff financial penalties for any breach of privacy such that the healthcare provider has a course of action to rectify the breach without undo cost burden;

B. Requirement of the cloud provider to meet regulatory compliance, regular audits of this compliance by third parties and immediate actions to rectify any gaps;

C. Private cloud models that ensure the data is stored on the premises of the healthcare organization while still getting the benefits of the cloud;

D. Use of the cloud for non-critical applications such as email, clinical collaboration, analytic tools, etc.

There is as much talk about cloud security as there is about privacy concerns, and they are somewhat related. Interestingly, HHS claims that of all the HIPAA breaches, only 6% can be attributed to hacking a system. The majority of cases involve theft of a computer—likely for the value of the computer and not the information within. A cloud provider will have top notch security protocols and processes that any healthcare organization should understand prior to a contract. How does the DC handle phishing or denial of service attacks? Do they have virus protection? What are the physical security aspects to prevent unwanted access? In many cases the cloud provider will have better systems in place than the organization itself - but these should be investigated.

High Availability

Healthcare deals with mission critical and life or death information. A cloud provider needs to understand that the architecture needed for healthcare is typically more robust than in other industries. Down time can’t be tolerated and service level agreements need to clearly define the expected response times. In Canada, Canada Health Infoway specifies that medical images must be stored in and retrieved from the Diagnostic Repository within 15 minutes of acquisition or request. These types of requirements must be written into the contracts prior to agreement.

The cloud can bring many benefits to healthcare organizations, but as with any new technology, due diligence needs to be done to ensure that better patient outcomes can be achieved at the same level of confidence as they are without cloud technologies.

The intent was by “…using Google Health, physicians will be able to more efficiently share important diagnostic data with their patients. As patients become better informed and proactive in managing their healthcare, they may be more likely to practice preventive care, adopt healthful behaviors and practice other measures that promote improved medical outcomes.”

Well, as it turns out, Google wasn’t so successful. What!?! Google failed to make a go of something? How does a company that brought us Google, Chrome, Google Earth and the like not be successful in healthcare? Aaron Brown, senior product manager of Google Health, said the initial aim of the service was to offer users a way to organize and access their personal health and wellness information, and thereby “translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare, and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users.”

And so here lies the problem that inundates healthcare. What Google didn’t realize was that people aren’t so willing to put their personal health records out in cyberspace as readily as they are willing to post their drunken party pictures.

Funny how that works.

Google then relaunched Google Health two and a half years later with a new UI and some more interactive tools. But alas that failed to catch on. Since then Microsoft Health Vault and Intel have offered to convert any Google Health files over to their format. The vultures are circling.

A personal health record has a lot of value if properly implemented. Ensuring that the content is accurate, that you can access this data from anywhere in the world and enable who you want to see your records is of immense value. Think about being on vacation and needing to have some healthcare treatment. If you have a cardiac problem, you can share your records with the local physician and they can see all of your medications (that you can’t spell or remember). They can see recent tests and the results and not repeat certain tests reducing your exposure to radiation and the like.

So what’s the problem?

The first issue: A personal health record that is maintained by a patient can’t be trusted by the physician treating the patient.

Patients may tend to put only what they want in the record. They may omit or even edit certain results, thinking that no harm can come to them. Who wants to share their positive HIV test or their mental health issues? How relevant is that to the chest pains they present with? In some cases the patient may even disagree with the results and omit them altogether. A personal health record that is not maintained by the parties providing the service is somewhat questionable when it comes to using it as a reliable source of information.

Second: Can we trust the Internet, the cloud and Google to maintain a level of security and privacy?

Most people do not trust companies to maintain their privacy when it comes to health records. Too many newspaper articles have front page stories where some hospital has leaked patient information. And recent stories about Google provide more proof that maybe Google has a conflict of interest in wanting to provide a personal health record. After privacy concerns were raised, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared in December 2009: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

Who would want this? Perhaps Eric Schmidt was the downfall of Google Health and didn’t even know it.

Personal health records have their time and place if properly administered, accurately maintained and controlled in a non-biased, healthcare managed way. But getting to this stage will be difficult with all of the issues that surround our need for privacy, not to mention the sheer task of trying to coordinate the massive amounts of data. Some facilities are doing this. Governments are investing in electronic health records, which may serve a similar purpose.

But today, personal health records are still something of a nice to have.

Earlier this year, leaders in the radiology space were pushing the industry to be better engaged with the Meaningful Use (MU) incentive program. MUs is a government incentive program that financially rewards healthcare professionals when they adopt certified EHR technology and use it to achieve specified objectives. Initially, radiologists were hesitant to participate, which raised fear that adoption delays could impact the ability to meet new clinical and technology demands. For an industry that has typically led the pack on clinical innovation, there seemed to be real risk of radiology being left behind.

Since that time, radiology’s participation in the MU program has been clarified, however radiology groups are still slower than expected in adopting these IT innovations – innovations that are essential both for improving patient interactions and for their promised financial reward. KLAS recently teamed up with the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) to conduct a survey on this very topic.  Among the results were two very interesting outcomes, the first showed that 60% of those surveyed either have a plan or are considering qualifying for the MU  incentives…. and more interesting, only 6% considered themselves educated on the MU incentive program. To me, that says there is a deep disconnect between the needs of the radiology consumer and how the technology players in this market are delivering their message.

I bring this up because, after following this story and having just returned from RSNA, I would have expected to see a plethora of MU messaging – and while RSNA provided a number of professional sessions on the topic – the MU message did not seem to make it to the show floor. Does it mean that IT health vendors are not coming to the table with Meaningful Use Certified solutions?  Probably not. I think it means that perhaps, there was a miscalculation in what vendors believed the radiology community wanted or needed to hear. When only 6% of those surveyed have a comfortable understanding of MU opportunities, it means 94% need more information to make better educated decisions about their MU plans.

The same must be said for Cloud, which was surprising when private and public cloud was the message dujour this time last year. I expected attendees of RSNA11 to be able to see and hear a more mature and better defined cloud message with a lot of industry examples and success stories. Instead, with the exception of a very small handful, the big message appeared to be imaging. Relevant? Yes. Forward thinking? I am not so sure.

And with 40,000+ radiology professionals in attendance, imaging is a given. I would have expected RSNA to be THE place to learn more about cloud and MU offerings – because it is clear that the radiology market is working hard to learn more about it.

What were your thoughts on how RSNA promoted innovation in radiology?

Gaining access to unstructured data opens opportunities for organizations, but it is only a start. It is even more important that organization know what data to access because the advantage will go to the company that can mine the most relevant value out of the data.

Consider a pharmaceutical company. They conduct clinical trials in the drug development phase. Multiple departments generate massive amounts of data that all relate to the drug’s interactions: blood tests, biopsy samples, pathology images, nursing and patient notes, not to mention chemical analysis and more. Combined with race, gender and geography factors, there is too much data to make sense of. Aggregating this data into meaningful information is the key to driving better decisions, like, for instance, identifying trends that can uncover major discoveries.

It’s a little known fact that Viagra was discovered by researchers when they found that patients didn’t want to give up their medication. The “benefit” (or side effect, depending on your gender) was an accidental discovery. Being able to correlate data that is seemingly unrelated can lead to major finds, and a way to show a relationship between your data will drive data mining and analytics to higher levels.

So there are two main challenges facing pharmaceutical companies when it comes to big data.

1. How does a company manage to store big data?
2. How can they make sense of this big data?

As you have seen recently with our cloud announcements, HDS has cloud technology that can address both challenges. Cloud computing for pharma companies comes with its own challenges, like:

• Security
• Ownership of data
• Migration

And these are important factors to consider.

Also, object-based storage is a way to store unstructured data and mine the associated meta data. Both Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) and Hitachi NAS powered by BlueArc® provide a means to manage unstructured data. HCP also forms the core of HDS cloud technology.

The key to managing big data is to enable reduced cycle times for computing massive queries. This drives pharma and biotech to gain an advantage over their competitors. High performance computing has a big role to play here - but that is a blog for another day.

So I did some research. “Big Data” refers to a volume of data too large to be harnessed and used in meaningful ways. In other words, Big Data is an accumulation of data that is going to waste and has no immediate meaning, mostly because no one can do anything with it due to its size.

Enter healthcare.

Healthcare providers are quickly becoming inundated with Big Data. Governments are unintentionally driving big data warehouses through health information exchanges, diagnostic imaging repositories and electronic health Records. Eighty percent of the data is unstructured, and it is accumulating to the point where it can be called Big Data. Now, on an individual basis, each patient record has value and meaning to the patient–obviously. But as we look at the growing accumulation of data, the opportunities are endless to drive meaningful analytics out of the volumes of data available.

Data warehouses are simply that–a warehouse for data. Data has no meaning on its own, and as providers create these warehouses, there needs to be a shift in how we think about the potential use of data. Data warehouses need to become information or content repositories. Information is a useful tool that results from the analysis of data driving decision making. Sounds like marketing fluff right? Let me demonstrate.

A diabetic patient monitors their blood sugar multiple times per day. This value gets stored electronically–this value is data. On its own it has little meaning (aside from the obvious immediate value to the patient) in the big picture of things. Now take that patient and all the patients in the region and their blood sugar values for the last 5 years. Analysis of this data could lead to trends—important information that can drive preventative health measures. This leads to better patient care, improved quality of life, and lower healthcare costs.

Much of this data is available today in separate repositories, isolated applications and local data warehouses. The potential to combine the blood sugar data with nursing notes keywords, weather forecasts, and other related and unrelated data can help drive this analysis. The challenge becomes getting access to this data and then overcoming the interoperability aspects. Problem is, we don’t know what we don’t know. Questions we would never ask today can be asked when the restrictions are lifted – Is there a correlation between diabetic hospital admissions and the weather pattern?

A content cloud could answer some of these challenges. Consolidate and aggregate data from multiple sources, and at the same time capture the relevant meta data associated with the data against which analytics can be run. Meta data can help manage the massive amounts of data being generated (the Big Data) and provide a way to correlate this data into meaningful information. This content then can be accessed by researchers and scientists to analyze.

Big Data is, and will continue to be, a major problem for healthcare providers. One estimate has healthcare Big Data sized at 150 exabytes and growing at a phenomenal rate of 1.2 exabytes per year. The possibilities of tapping into that information are endless. It has been a challenge for pharmaceutical and biotech companies for years - but that’s another discussion.

I see four stages of evolution in the healthcare space for customers that want or need to go to the cloud for various reasons. Healthcare tends to be behind other industries when it comes to adopting technology so this evolution needs to happen at the speed at which our customers will be comfortable. This evolution starts with “Cloud Ready” Technology. By buying the HDS “box”, the customer starts down the road of enabling the cloud by being ready from an investment perspective. Take for example Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). A customer can utilize HCP to manage their patient information from the radiology department to start. This would be locally hosted and managed and be like all other departments - a silo of storage.

Stage two involves the customer moving this equipment to a hosted environment, adding additional applications to HCP and expanding the capabilities. It may also include virtualization of an existing data center such that multiple applications are now sharing the storage virtually and Hitachi and its partners take on more of a managed service role. Storage on demand becomes an option. At this point our customers start to build out the Infrastructure Cloud and are managing a number of applications and their accompanying storage as a cloud model. Think of MS Exchange, PACS and Hospital Information Systems data being managed through the cloud.

But as we have talked about before, just storing data in the cloud is of limited use unless the physicians are able to utilize this data for clinical decision making and so the Content Cloud evolves as the customers add Hitachi Clinical Repository to the mix. Now the customers are ingesting data through the cloud, indexing that data as it arrives so physicians can see the patient longitudinal record and storing of this information. Through various applications facilities can now provide access to their physicians via cloud based applications. Electronic medical records, physician portals and patient portals all fit into this arena. The Content Cloud offers healthcare providers the opportunity to expand their services and to provide new services and methods of communications to its population much more easily and quickly. All the benefits of the cloud apply to healthcare: reliability, lower costs with higher utilization rates and a simplified IT management environment. Remember - healthcare providers’ main function is to care for patients and so IT is not always their strength.

Now that we have created content and made it available to those in need, the final stage of our maturity model starts to appear. The Information Cloud brings hospitals and caregivers to the highest level of maturity. Utilizing the content that has been collected from across multiple facilities, from many patients and physicians, we can start to apply “smarts” to this data. By adding analytics to the healthcare information we can start to develop best practices for disease treatment and determine which medications have the best impact on certain diseases. We can start to track epidemics before they happen and track back to Patient Zero when they do happen. We can make better clinical decisions for the population and identify trends in the early stages. With the right applications we can manage chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease much better – thus lowering the cost of healthcare for all and improving the quality of life for many.

In the end, a Cloud Maturity Model is probably what is most needed for our healthcare facilities to improve patient outcomes and we can show our customers how to get there at their own speed. Without it, we will continue to struggle with access to data, we will continue to miss the big picture and ultimately we will continue to see patient healthcare costs increase to unmanageable levels and that will hurt us all – ouch!

What do you think of this Cloud Maturity Model? Are their other steps that need to be taken?

Want to read more about our Cloud Roadmap? Visit our bit.ly bundle here: http://bitly.com/pCt5Gk

Unfortunately, the care environment is littered with application-centric technologies like PACS and provider-centric technologies like EMRs. Neither of which delivers a patient-centric, portable view of the patient. The concept of the holistic electronic health record has been extenuated in recent moves toward personal health records. The use of clinical data mining in genetic records will change the outcomes of various disease states. Once healthcare providers gain access to comprehensive electronic patient records, the drive toward predictive, personalized medicine will be possible.

Here is an interesting article by Brian T. Horowitz of eWEEK, on the challenges cloud computing presents to the healthcare industry.

Will the role of VNAs in the healthcare of tomorrow be central or peripheral? The continued evolution of IT solutions is likely to be the catalyst propelling the VNA approach either into the limelight or the shadows.

What do you think?

But what is the cloud to healthcare providers really? How does the cloud fit into healthcare?

We know that healthcare investment trails behind other industries in spending by as much as 5% and in technology adoption, so how will adoption of cloud computing be any different?

What is the cloud in a healthcare context? Cloud means many things to many people and questions abound. If you have access to the Internet, do you have the cloud? Is paying for access on an as-needed basis the cloud? What about having a 3rd party manage your IT – is this a cloud model?

Complex Yet Simple

The answer is yes – and no. While these are factors that contribute to having a cloud operation, the cloud in healthcare is really more complex and at the same time simplified for providers.  Here are four benefits:

1. Economies of Scale

The cloud gives healthcare providers a means of saving costs by taking advantage of economies of scale. By sharing resources with other facilities, the initial investment required to get started is greatly diminished and the ability to transform the clinical setting can be accelerated.

Take for example the use case of having disaster recovery capabilities for your imaging department. To invest in an offsite DR facility can be as costly, as buying equipment, providing a site, and all the trappings that come with this can be quite onerous. Outsourcing this to a cloud provider means that a facility could get started today without requiring vast amounts of capital.

2. OPEX vs. CAPEX

The cloud also allows a facility to operationalize these expenses. Rather than a capital purchase, the facility funds this through operational expenditures, which are often easier to manage than going to the board for capital.

3. Predictability

Healthcare data grows at unusual rates. The growth of digital information is hard to predict because as more systems become digital the volume of data they produce increases demand. Using the cloud as a way to predict the growth rate of information takes away all the guess work.

No longer does a facility have to plan their infrastructure for growth because the cloud provider is ready to handle any increase or decrease in demand on the fly. This also means that expenses go by the way of usage – don’t use a service, don’t pay for it. Get 100% optimization out of a system all the time. It’s hard to beat that kind of return on investment.

4. Service Innovation

The cloud also offers healthcare providers a unique opportunity to provide new services that would otherwise be cost prohibitive. Digital pathology is a good example. The move to digital pathology poses a huge problem for many healthcare providers as the costs associated with large file sizes and the required infrastructure is challenging to say the least. But a cloud based solution opens new doors. Not only could a facility manage the infrastructure requirements but they can provide access to specialists and pathologists that they may not have had access to before. This enables smaller facilities or remote caregivers to provide new services to their patient population in a cost effective manner.

Precautions

However, given the suspicious nature of healthcare information being “out there,” the cloud is not the panacea it may seem. There are a number of issues that providers need to be aware of before jumping into a cloud infrastructure. Legislation and regulatory concerns such as HIPAA impact not only the healthcare facility, but as patient information moves to the cloud, there are issues that need to be addressed. The cloud provider must be “security and privacy aware” as it pertains to patient information. In addition to this, the actual location of where data will be stored can also be a problem. Patient data that crosses borders, for example, can present a whole myriad of problems.

Pundits often raise the issue of who owns the data once it gets to the cloud but I think the issue is more around how you get the data out of one provider and move it to another, should the desire to change providers arise. The use of standards and ensuring that there are no proprietary features that will tie in a facility are of utmost importance.

Finally, Service Level Agreements will be important. Healthcare providers need to have 24/7/365 access to patient data. It needs to be fast and reliable and downtime is not tolerated when it comes to patient care. As cloud providers move into healthcare, I’m sure we will see demanding healthcare requirements push the technology to its limits very quickly. That said, I believe that the technology will keep up and providers will be able to take advantage of all the benefits the cloud can offer in terms of improving patient care.

So how do healthcare providers get to the cloud? Stay tuned for my Cloud Maturity Model in Healthcare post, coming soon.

Dave has been instrumental in preparing our presence at HIMSS 2011 and launching Hitachi Clinical Repository (HCR), which we announced today.  Dave and I took a moment last week during our final show preparations to chat about why we’re attending HIMSS for the first time, our position in the healthcare market and the need for a solution like HCR.  I’ve captured the chat here, so I hope you enjoy it.

So why is Hitachi Data Systems attending HIMSS11? Hitachi hasn’t participated in this show in the past so why now?

Dave: This is true. Last year, the Hitachi executive team decided to focus on health and life sciences.  Since then, we’ve really built out a solid team and that’s how we find ourselves at HIMSS this year.

If you think about it, HIMSS attendance is composed of approximately 63% C-Suite and Senior Managers, which is the prime target of Hitachi solutions. We believe that we have some unique solutions that are focused on the healthcare space and HIMSS is the perfect launching point.

Hitachi is a storage vendor, so what makes HDS unique in the healthcare space?

Dave: You’re right, HDS is a storage provider and for many of our healthcare partners we provide exactly this service; however, when it comes to focused solutions we  have some new offerings targeted at the healthcare space. To be specific, virtualization and the Hitachi Clinical Repository will be the focus for HIMSS11.

Virtualization is an old story. Why is the relevant to the healthcare space?

Dave: Recently we were involved in a CIO Summit where we surveyed the attendees and found that all had a virtualization strategy (not surprising), but it was limited to servers and desktops. What none of the attendees had was a virtualization strategy for the storage aspect. When asked why, the common response was that they just hadn’t thought about it. We see this as a great opportunity for providers to recognize significant cost savings and we are willing to prove it.

A hospital typically buys storage at a departmental level, driven by departmental application needs. Surprisingly, a small percentage of hospitals have an enterprise storage strategy for virtualization. Hitachi can virtualize all of these different departments and reduce the amount of administration required, save money from the storage acquisition perspective and optimize existing systems. To show the ROI possible, Hitachi can come in and assess the existing environment with our Storage Economics program and show the savings available.

And Hitachi Clinical Repository? Is this a VNA or PACS archive?

Dave: HCR is not a medical imaging Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA). Unlike current VNAs that focus only on medical images, HCR consolidates all patient data, standardizes the formats across applications and then provides this data to EHR and portals in a single view. Hitachi Clinical Repository takes the concept of Medical Imaging VNAs and expands it to include the entire healthcare facility. Its unique capability is adding patient metadata to image and non-image data, at any point in the lifecycle, to restore the long-term value of this data.

HCR Architecture

How does HCR compare to the competition?

Dave: HCR is unique to the industry, as most companies are focused on medical imaging VNAs. HCR virtualizes the information gathered by multiple applications, separating the application from the data. HCR is focused on the entire patient’s history across the healthcare facility. HCR and Hitachi are focused on solving clinical challenges presented in today’s healthcare environment – namely the ability to consolidate a patient’s longitudinal view (history) and to provide access to that view from a single pane of glass. HCR forms the foundation for building EHRs. It uses the metadata associated with patient results to create an interoperable information base that physicians can use to make better patient care decisions.

When will we be able to see HCR? Is this a reality or vaporware?

Dave: If you are attending HIMSS, you can see HCR and our virtualization solutions at our booth #6742. Hitachi’s capabilities around managing metadata from disparate information silos across a healthcare facility will be highlighted in Hall A (EHR/EMR, Booth #263) on Monday, Feb 21, 1:30 - 2:15 p.m with you [Bill Burns] and Klinikum-Wels Grieskirchen discussing The Digitization of Patient Care and Enterprise Readiness. I encourage folks to come out and see how Hitachi’s customers are addressing the challenges faced by providers.

Klinikum-Wels Grieskirchen Architecture with HCR

Customers are also invited to join us Monday night from 5:30-7:30 for a Cocktail Reception (stop by the booth for an invitation).

Finally, Hitachi will be present on the CSC booth where we are jointly launching our Application Readiness Program focused on helping providers get ready for their ICD-10 transformation. Virtualization will play a large part in this program as facilities will be able to realize cost savings to help offset their upgrades and ICD-10 readiness plans.

Thanks, Dave.  It should be an exciting show and we are looking forward to it – see you in Orlando!

After dispensing with the pleasantries, I was pleased to discover we were in remarkably similar fields - and with a wide range of topics to chat about, we settled into an interesting conversation about virtualization.  The chat began to derail a bit when he said, “I read an article recently that said virtualization is the way of the future”.  I had to admit (and I told him so), I was a bit surprised - the future?  Do you mean….it’s not here and now?

I was recently involved in a CIO Summit where we surveyed the attendees and found that all of them had a virtualization strategy; granted it was predominantly servers and desktops but still, we have moved beyond the early adoption stage and have moved into the mainstream. So either my flight mate was quoting an article from the year 2001 or maybe he was talking about the second round of virtualization - storage - to be exact.

A hospital typically buys storage at a departmental level, driven by the departmental application needs. In a growing number of scenarios, there exists an enterprise storage strategy from the perspective of virtualization where all of these different departments can be virtualized to reduce the amount of administration required, save money from the storage acquisition perspective and optimize the existing systems. Today, Hitachi is working with health provider organizations to show the ROI possible through an innovative Storage Economics offering that can estimate the savings available!

We then started talking about how virtualizing storage was NOT the last frontier for virtualization. This got him completely confused. Virtualizing storage is great and has significant benefits to the IT department and C-Suite, but what about virtualizing the information that all of these silos generate? This degenerated into discussions around vendor neutral archives and as this is my background I may have caused his eyes to glaze over (although it could have been the drink). We soon got beyond radiology and discussed how to create an Electronic Health Record infrastructure that would transcend beyond the silos we find today and enable physicians to see the complete medical record of their patient.

This is the future aspect of virtualization. In reading a report on Canadian healthcare, the author identified that 33% of facilities had trouble sharing data between different departments. This has a significant clinical impact on physicians and patients. Getting access to data is critical to good decision making and it can contribute to cost savings in the long run. My seatmate started to see where I was going with this. Just because a doctor has a computer doesn’t mean he has access to your information. Scary thought!

It’s on flights like this that time passes quickly; I only hope my new friend feels the same way.

Don’t forget - Hitachi Data Systems will be at HIMSS11 in Orlando, Florida February 20-24 in Booth #6742, where you can see - first hand - Hitachi virtualization solutions and Hitachi’s capabilities around managing metadata from disparate information silos across a healthcare facility.

It should be an exciting show and we are looking forward to it - see you in Orlando!