According to a global survey carried out recently, diagnostic images, scanned documents, emails and advances towards 
the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) are the major causes for the upsurge in healthcare data that is currently challenging hospitals, the survey was carried out by BridgeHead Software, the Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) providing company.
These results came from the Data Management Healthcheck 2010, a global survey discussing the ongoing strategies controlling the healthcare industry for managing IT systems. The survey found that 69% of healthcare organizations are expecting the volumes of their data to increase this year. On the other hand, nearly 6% mentioned that these volumes are going to stay constant while only 1% expected their data volumes to decrease. The major number of attendants (65%) who expected their data volumes to increase noted that PACS files were the main culprits, followed then by EPR files (45.5%). Moreover, 84% of the attendants said that more than half of their healthcare organizations' data was older than six months old. However, only 26% mentioned that they were having full archiving capabilities. Furthermore, nearly 44% of hospitals reported having more than 5TB primary store, while 12% only noted that they were using less than 1TB primary store.
Director of Marketing at BridgeHead Software, John McCann, commented on these findings saying that "The evidence speaks for itself," he added "Data volumes are increasing as the world of healthcare continues to embrace the digital age. A troubling trend we've noticed, however, is that some healthcare organizations are not paying due attention to their data management and storage solution strategies. Many of the hospitals' IT infrastructures are not geared up to handle the rise in data resulting from the increased use of medical images, the continued move towards the Electronic Health Record (EHR) and the massive upsurge in office-based computing e.g. emails, spreadsheets, word processing documents. Many are ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away, while others are implementing quick fixes that resolve the issue for now, but are not future-proof. As data volumes continue to grow, some organizations will find their challenges gradually become harder--not easier--to resolve." McCann continued, "However, savvy healthcare IT professionals recognize that underpinning their digital environments with a robust data management and storage strategy can not only help maximize the full value of their clinical information, but can also help them save time, reduce costs, lower carbon emissions from their IT infrastructures, and, ultimately, improve patient care."
BridgeHead Software offers Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV), a technology system that decouples applications from the storage device and establishes common pools of exchangeable storage hardware that can be accessed when needed, with no consideration of the application or data type. HSV was introduced for the first time in the United Kingdom last month. BridgeHead Software's CEO, Tony Cotterill, commented "Healthcare Storage Virtualization embodies our ethos of supporting and underpinning the electronic patient record and empowering IT at hospitals of all sizes to meet growing storage needs without compromising on current hardware brand or media type," he added "HSV provides the essential foundation for intelligent storage supporting all applications across the entire hospital - from archiving DICOM images from the PACS system to scanning documents for the EPR system."
