Every modern healthcare organization relies on information technology to function. IT is central to the time, costs and complexities that either obstruct or accelerate progress. However, a Harvard Business Review study1 found that healthcare leaders see “outdated or ineffective IT infrastructure as their major roadblock.” Addressing that, we’ve seen healthcare agencies implement Actifio to collapse costs and time factors while gaining remarkable efficiencies. These aren’t simple incremental adjustments but transformational health care delivery models.
Aside from political rhetoric, we know that healthcare is a vital social and economic force. It touches each of us. It’s also an information intensive industry subject to extreme scrutiny. Innovation pressures are constant. And those pressures include more than positive health outcomes. Healthcare faces the challenges of rising costs, improved efficiency, privacy and fiscal responsibility. All of that is set in a frame of medical science, government regulations, and insurance dictates. And data. Lots of data.
Critical data underpins all the complex interchange of patient records, research, and medical advances. Health informatics, Telehealth and adherence to regulation all impact efficient delivery of services. The controlling data must be reliable, immediately accessible and secure.
And, yes, health records have become a prime target for hackers. According to CSID, a provider of identity protection and fraud detection, the healthcare industry accounted for 43% of all major data breaches in 2013. So, data security is also central to the efficient care delivery that directly impacts patient outcomes.
One Actifio client, Access Community Health Network (ACCESS), supports 40 community health centers throughout metropolitan Chicago. Their Electronic Health Records (EHR) system organizes all patient and financial information. The digital equivalent of a patient’s chart, the objective is instant, secure access to every patient’s medical history, medications and more. EHR has become the streamlined, automated, and mission critical healthcare workflow for every modern medical institution.
Even though ACCESS has a small IT team, their system serves more than a thousand users and patient-facing medical staff. They need 24×7 high-performance access with absolutely no downtime. Implementing Actifio’s copy data virtualization platform, they experienced system-wide improvements in performance, resiliency and protection of patient-support IT systems. Slow manual processes were automated and data migrations streamlined. Entire application environments were seamlessly transferred to new infrastructure. Upgrades were so easy and fast that costly consulting engagements became unnecessary.
ACCESS is just one example of Actifio’s healthcare and life sciences customers who have significantly reduced costs while delivering better service levels. They have transformed healthcare delivery through a unified data management platform. With a single system, they simultaneously support application development, test, backup, disaster recovery, analytics, archive and more.
Our goal is always to play a part in helping our customers succeed. It’s even more gratifying to know that we have helped make a positive impact on the lives of patients.
1. The Biggest U.S. Health Care Challenges Are Management Challenges
Paul Merrild, FEBRUARY 06, 2015
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