HOPKINTON, Mass., Nov. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation, the world leader in information storage and management, announced today that Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, a network of 12 hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare programs, has implemented EMC Centera(TM) content-addressed storage to archive patient records throughout the lifetime of patients. Centera enables Memorial Hermann to affect clinical workflow by archiving and retrieving patient records dramatically faster -- furthering compliance with federal and state regulations that govern the retention and security of medical records and automating records management to increase employee productivity.
Robert Weeks, Memorial Hermann’s Director of Information Technology, said, “Each day, our systems generate thousands of documents and images that must be instantaneously available to our 4,500 doctors, nurses and administrators. Additionally, our internal quality standards and federal regulations often require that we keep this information for the lifetime of a patient, so our information assets are growing exponentially. With EMC Centera, we have a solution that will grow with us and provide the responsiveness we need. Already, we rely on Centera to archive 25 million documents and images, and we anticipate we’ll add 40 million more each year.”
Based in Houston, Memorial Hermann previously relied on an optical storage and retrieval (OSAR) system, which could not keep up with the organization’s rapidly growing active archive needs. Record retrieval by this system was slow, and there were often numerous, backlogged requests to access the system when the OSAR solution was taken offline. To support its long-term paperless patient record system, Memorial Hermann now uses Centera to archive data across three imaging applications: FileNet’s document-imaging solution, Heartlab’s cardiovascular imaging system (CVIS) and GE’s Healthcare PACS (picture archiving communications system) application. As the value of medical information changes over a patient’s lifetime, Memorial Hermann moves PACS and other images from EMC CLARiiON(R) to Centera for long-term archiving. This tiered storage approach and multi-application support enables Memorial Hermann to lower storage acquisition and ongoing management costs while managing retention periods and expiration dates more accurately.
“Quick, unimpeded access to patient and administrative information is critical to our service delivery model,” said Weeks. “Previously, our employees would sometimes need to wait more than a minute to retrieve documents. Now, it takes one to three seconds. As a result, our users get their jobs done more quickly and efficiently, which in turn leads to higher- quality patient care.”
Centera also safeguards sophisticated retention schedules at the storage media level to help enable compliance, in accordance with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).
“With EMC Centera, we can access our imaging system quickly to retrieve, print and deliver -- on demand -- any patient’s medical record to the JCAHO auditors,” said Weeks. “We can also specify various retention periods, whether it’s for five or 20 years or even a lifetime, to comply with HIPAA regulations and our own storage security requirements.”
To support this initiative, Memorial Hermann also utilizes CLARiiON Fibre Channel and ATA platforms to deliver consolidated storage to PACS, Health Information System (HIS), Microsoft Exchange and other applications. EMC software such as EMC PowerPath(R), EMC Navisphere(R) and EMC SnapView(TM) provide centralized management and backup and recovery of the CLARiiON environment. EMC Services implemented this multi-tiered networked storage infrastructure.
About EMC
EMC Corporation is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at http://www.emc.com/.
EMC, CLARiiON, PowerPath, and Navisphere are registered trademarks, and Centera and SnapView are trademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact: Patrick Cooley 508-293-6583 cooley_patrick@emc.com
EMC Corporation
CONTACT: Patrick Cooley of EMC, +1-508-293-6583, cooley_patrick@emc.com
Web site: http://www.emc.com/