Hospitals Update Data Centers

HDM Breaking News, August 26, 2009

As community hospitals gear up their clinical automation efforts and reach out to help area physicians adopt electronic health records, they’re taking a closer look at whether their data centers will meet their needs. Many are coming to the same conclusion: It’s time to replace their servers and related technologies to better support clinical applications.

“Smaller hospitals have to do exactly the same work as larger hospitals” to prepare for ramping up clinical applications, says Becky Quammen, CEO of the Quammen Group, an Orlando-based consulting firm. As hospitals of all sizes adopt comprehensive electronic health records systems to qualify for incentives under the federal stimulus package, many are discovering that their data centers may not be up to the task, she says.

In addition, some hospitals are helping area clinics adopt EHRs, hosting the applications at their data centers. And this often requires a data center upgrade.

For example, many hospitals are using “virtualization” software that creates several “virtual machines” within a server running separate operating systems and applications. Many also are using blade servers, a box that holds eight to 10 servers. And some also are implementing storage area networks, commonly called SANs, that enable them to share storage space to improve efficiency.

To read an in-depth story from the September issue of Health Data Management on data center strategies, click here.

 

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:

• Data Repositories
• Data Security
• Electronic Health Records
• Hardware
• Stimulus
• Hospitals