Healthcare Data Storage Options: On-Premise, Cloud and Hybrid Data Storage
Healthcare organizations are building their IT infrastructures to be more flexible and scalable to meet the growing data demand. With value-based incentives for data analytics and the increased number of connected medical devices constantly collecting data, organizations are challenged with storing clinical data in a way that is both HIPAA-compliant and easy for authorized users to access.
Traditionally, healthcare organizations have shied away from cloud data storage in favor of on-premise options because of the control IT administrators have over physical datacenters. However, entities are recently more likely to implement cloud storage into their IT infrastructure to some extent because of the reduced maintenance costs and improved HIPAA-compliance.
Cloud data storage options offer a flexible and scalable environment at a lower cost than on-premise deployments, which is appealing to covered entities. Organizations exploring data analytics are expecting their storage requirements to steadily increase as Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile devices collect data that needs to be stored.
One of the biggest data storage challenges healthcare organizations face is how to piece together legacy systems while integrating new systems into the infrastructure. Many entities cannot afford to mass migrate data from one storage system to the other, which is why interoperability between different cloud vendors is necessary for a smooth transition.
Not every healthcare organization will benefit from the same type of data storage, which makes choosing a storage deployment a challenge for any organization. HITInfrastructure.com will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different storage options and explore the potential of on-premise hosted virtualized storage solutions.
Defining the Basics of the Healthcare Big Data Warehouse
Pure Storage Vice President and CTO of Healthcare Vik Nagjee explained that healthcare organizations are more likely to lean toward on-premise storage than other industries because the control they have over an environment kept in-house.
“Hospitals tend to want to build their own datacenters,” Nagjee told HITInfrastructure.com. “It happens all the time. Uptime is super important in healthcare; you can’t afford to have these systems go down.”
On-premise storage does not require a wireless internet connection to retrieve clinical data, making it considerable less risky. Due to the nature of healthcare data, organizations want to deploy the storage solution they feel is the most secure, which is often the solution they have the most control over.
Forward Health Group CTO Jeff Thomas told HITInfrastructure.comthat there is a comfort level for organizations in knowing that their data is in their data center.
“They can walk up and touch it, and sometimes it’s that emotional comfort factor that has some healthcare organizations leaning toward keeping data in house,” Thomas noted.
On-premise storage has also evolved over the past several years to include rack servers and hyper-converged solutions.
Rack servers are more scalable than dedicated tower servers because they contain racks where more hardware can be placed. Rack servers also don’t take up as much space or require the same cooling energy costs, which makes them ideal for smaller organizations that want to host their datacenter on premise but don’t have much space or resources.
Many rack servers use flashed-based array, which brings down operating costs even more because of how they’re built. Flash-based arrays use solid-state drives (SSD), meaning they do not have fans or get as hot as traditional datacenter hardware. This also helps bring down maintenance costs significantly.
Hyper-convergence can also be hosted on-premise, but uses cloud and virtualization technology to store and run a health IT infrastructure.
