HP, Iron Mountain partner for digital archiving, disaster recovery
At the 2008 HIMSS conference in Orlando, Fla., Hewlett Packard (HP) and Iron Mountain reported that they are collaborating to offer mid-size hospitals and imaging centers an offsite disaster recovery and archiving service for protecting and storing the rising volume of diagnostic images.

As a company, Iron Mountain is currently building a digital analogy to complement its physical storage component, Archie Miller, vice president of strategic partnerships, digital, at Iron Mountain, told Health Imaging News.

“This initiative with HP represents part of our strategy of building up the digital equivalent to our physical business, because we already store a lot of radiology and cardiology records for our physical business,” Miller pointed out. 

Iron Mountain's new Digital Record Center for Medical Images is a disaster recovery and long-term archiving service that is powered by the HP Medical Archive solution (MAS) and leverages Iron Mountain's Storage-as-a-Service. As a result, healthcare institutions, who must deliver access to diagnostic images, comply with federal laws for handling patient data and yet, it reduces their long-term storage costs of storing and securing the data on-site, according to the companies.

“Both organizations are selling the service, so we have a coverage model that is complimentary. From a professional services standpoint, we [at Iron Mountain] are taking the lead on professional services, and HP is also available for peak demand situations,” according to Miller.

“We worked collaboratively with HP over the last year or more to transform their successful MAS technology into a managed services offering, so it has the scalability properties and the security that a multi-tenet archive has. Now our clients can help participate in the efficiencies that the service would bring to them,” Miller said.

As a managed service, the Digital Record Center for Medical Images provides secure, off-site, back-up protection without requiring hospitals and imaging centers to set aside storage systems, data center space, staff and capital investments.

“A lot of customers, especially in the market segments that we are targeting do not have the true capabilities of recovering from a disaster, whether that’s a hurricane or some technological disaster. We are enabling our customers to have secure retention of their data, and we give them the ability to keep the information off-site, and allow them to recover a lot faster from disasters,” Lisa Dali, worldwide product marketing manager of HP Information Management within HP Software, told Health Imaging News.

“If customers are required through HIPAA or other regulatory requirements to maintain patient records forever, then they have to have the capability to manage it intelligently. In the case of disaster recovery, our solution allows them to meet compliance requirements, while providing rapid access to data in real-time, as the clinicians need those images instantly on screen, and the ability to do so over the long term in a way that is cost-efficient for the overall enterprise,” Dali concluded. 
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