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Rex Lewis, senior SAN/UNIX engineer for Wellmont, said "EMC is our singlesource for integrated SAN, NAS, and now archiving and disaster recoverysolutions. We partnered with EMC to initiate best practices supported byindustry-leading storage solutions. We have successfully and cost-effectivelymet our diverse healthcare information management requirements."
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Wellmont Health System's integrated healthcare delivery system iscomprised of more than thirteen owned and affiliated hospitals dedicated todelivering top-quality, comprehensive healthcare and wellness services acrossthe Tri-State region. This broad reach across multiple communities andspecialties requires patients' medical images be online and available todoctors 24-hours a day, granting instant access to critical medical imageswhen an emergency strikes.
As part of its information lifecycle management strategy, Wellmont hasdeployed 542 terabytes of storage capacity across EMC Symmetrix(R), EMCCelerra(R), EMC CLARiiON(R) and EMC Centera(R). This multi-tieredinfrastructure successfully supports the organizations most criticalapplications, providing unsurpassed access speeds, continuous availability andaffordable data protection for information at all points in its lifecycle.
Previously, Wellmont's historical medical images were stored on opticaldisks in one central location. For a radiologist to compare a current imagewith a historical image, an IT operator had to search the shelves of opticaldisks, find the right disk, mount it in the jukebox, and provide access to theradiologist. Retrieving one of these images took approximately 30 minutes,and if an image was corrupted, a backup copy was not available. To providehospital staff with a more efficient, safe and cost-effective method to store,access and view these images, Wellmont selected Centera as its online centralarchive.
"EMC Centera has given our radiologists instant access to historicalimages," said Lewis. "It has enabled them to be even more efficient whentreating patients, and provides a cost-effective, secure method for complyingwith the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)requirements for data protection."
Centera helps Wellmont manage its rapidly expanding digital data archiveof new images, providing rapid access, content authenticity and petabytescalability to fully accommodate the organization's growing demand forarchival storage for Microsoft Exchange and other key applications includingthose from Agfa, docSTAR, Eleckta, Emageon, GE Healthcare, McKesson andPhilips.
To support this automated file system archive, Wellmont has also deployedEMC DiskXtender(R). When the archiving policies set for the McKesson HorizonPatient Folder are met, DiskXtender migrates information to the Centera, andalso archives all Microsoft Exchange messages to Centera as they are processedby the e-mail system.
"Our archive has grown by almost 1500 percent since 2003," said Lewis."It is absolutely critical to our business and our bottom line that ourinformation infrastructure be scalable, affordable, and tiered to protect allour critical information at the right service levels."
About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and providerof information infrastructure tech
