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Advanced Storage Delivers |
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By Lisa Fratt
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Sponsored by an educational grant from Siemens & EMC Corporation
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The exponentially large data sets from newly deployed 64-slice CT scanners were the tipping point for the decision to deploy a new information infrastructure plan at Children’s Health System, says PACS Administrator Lynn Odom.
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Radiology is a high-tech business. The amount of technology in any radiology department is impressive. And although advanced technology, like 64-slice CT, is a boon to radiology, it also is a burden because new modalities produce exponentially larger datasets. Storing those large datasets is a hefty undertaking.
Conventional storage solutions like tape libraries no longer fit the bill for many radiology departments. The problems with tape-based archives and radiology are multiple and entrenched. Tape is slow, prone to glitches and not easily scaled.
Advanced information infrastructure solutions, consisting of EMC CLARiiON CX series storage for current studies and EMC Centera active archiving storage solutions for records retention offer a new (and significantly improved) model. In contrast to tape archives, EMC Centera is lightening fast, reliable and scaleable.
Children’s Health System and its flagship Children’s Hospital of Alabama, replaced their nearly full tape library with a pair of EMC Centera active archiving storage systems early in 2008 during a transition to Siemens syngo Suite integrated RIS/PACS solution.
“EMC Centera is an ideal storage solution for the hospital,” says PACS Administrator Lynn Odom. One inherent, seemingly unsolvable problem with the previous system, a tape library, was historical image review. In the pediatric imaging environment, it is not uncommon for physicians to require historical images on a moment’s notice. In these cases, technologists have no time to pre-fetch data, so the radiologist often takes on the task. As Children’s tape archive filled, it took more time to recall prior images. “It might take six minutes or longer to recall prior images,” says Odom.
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| One of two EMC Centera content-addressed storage systems installed in the Children’s data center.
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EMC Centera significantly improves the image recall rate. A simple right-click delivers any imaging data within a few seconds, says Odom.
Another tape challenge stems from its frailty. Tape drives are prone to mechanical issues. If the tape malfunctions, it can take longer or may be impossible, for a time, to recall archived studies. Neither option represents an ideal business model.
EMC Centera, on the other hand, is robust. Children’s installed two separate systems and image data are simultaneously written to each archive. “If there’s a problem with one system, it switches to the second, so radiologists never encounter a delay in image retrieval,” explains Odom. The outcome is ideal; the department’s eight radiologists are able to maintain a steady pace.
Despite the apparent advantages of EMC CLARiiON CX series systems and EMC Centera active archiving storage solution, the health system has not yet realized all of the benefits of its advanced storage solution. That’s because some benefits will be realized in the future as the archive grows and Children’s develops its disaster recovery program. With EMC Centera, increasing information infrastructure capacity entails the simple addition of a new disk. In contrast, expanding the tape library required changing systems. Finally, EMC Centera provides a solid foundation for business continuity and disaster recovery. Children’s owns two separately housed systems. “Eventually we plan to move one archive to a hot site as a more robust disaster recovery plan,” explains Odom.
The decision to deploy EMC Centera active archiving storage solution in conjunction with syngo Suite not only continues to pay dividends on a daily basis by enabling rapid image retrieval, but also represents a sound foundation for the future. EMC CLARiiON and EMC Centera can be easily scaled to meet growing needs and provides a framework for disaster recovery.
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