* How one hospital network streamlined its storage infrastructure
Delivering “BLOBs” (Binary Large Objects) such as MRI data carries high-bandwidth requirements. This, plus the ‘networked’ nature of healthcare (campus-based and metro networks) often means that optical networks are the networks of choice. Most long-haul optical networks rely on carrier-based networks, but an increasing number of healthcare organizations are finding that private optical networking looks like a near-ideal infrastructure.
Indianapolis-based Community Health has five regional hospitals. In early 2003, its IT department began moving from a carrier-based to a private optical network to improve the way it transferred storage between sites. Cost-analysis had indicated that using a private optical network would increase its ability to roll out new high-bandwidth apps while at the same time saving an estimated $11 million over 13 years.
The goal of the project was to enable broadband connectivity between sites, facilitate the transport of digitized medical images (PACS – picture archiving and communications system – information) and electronic medical records, and to provide a backbone for business continuity and disaster-recovery initiatives. The project included the integration of applications, servers, and dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) devices for optical connectivity. The storage-area network infrastructure (about 50T bytes worth) included IBM arrays, four Brocade switches, 10 Cisco DWDM and SONET devices, and network management technology and consulting services from CentrePath.
The private optical and storage network connects the Community Hospital’s data center with the data center at Indiana Heart Hospital and with a disaster-recovery data center in downtown Indianapolis. Authorized personnel can immediately access digitized medical images and electronic medical records from any of the sites. Additionally, the hospital added new applications such as real-time video conferencing for psychiatric diagnosis, and will be adding a new site, North Hospital, with an all-digital, state-of-the-art pediatrics facility, in 2007.
For those of you in hospital IT: Community Health implemented GE PACS for its electronic medical records, cardiology images and other long-term imaging requirements; IDX for shorter-term retention of radiology images, and uses McKesson financial applications. The 50T bytes of storage includes 5T bytes of critical clinical data, 10T bytes of imaging data, 10T bytes of business data, and 7 to 8T bytes of e-mail archiving. The remaining storage is individual PC data stored on the servers.
With implementation of the private optical and storage network, Community Health now synchronously replicates to a single, consolidated disaster recovery site. Consolidation of both disaster recovery and tape libraries has let the healthcare network cancel outsourced disaster recovery services and has eliminated the need for off-site tape services.
The net result: Community Health now has a highly-reliable, high-bandwidth infrastructure that efficiently supports the new technologies it is bringing online. As proof of this, Community Health won the “Best Practices in Storage” award at Storage Networking World two weeks ago, and for five years running Community Health has been listed among the “Top 100 Most-Wired Hospitals and Health Networks” by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine.
It turns out there is much more to Indianapolis than driving around a brick oval for three hours each Memorial Day.
