Are Your PACS Systems Prepared for Disaster Recovery?

Change is in the air for the medical imaging field. The government is making a big push for medical facilities to begin implementing the use of digital imaging in all phases of the health profession. Electronic medical records and picture archiving and communication systems will soon become even more important within a medical organization’s overall architecture. However easy this may make the communication of information, it creates a fragile environment in which one foreseen accident can create a great deal of problems concerning the storage of these records.

Health care systems across the world are living everyday with a potential disaster waiting to happen – your computer networks. How your computer systems being backed up and better are yet, where is your data? In case of an emergency, such as a major earthquake, fire, flood, cyber-attack or even a catastrophic power failure, what would happen to all of that important information? Would your digital medical records be safe? The answer is probably not which is why they better be backed up locally and also separately, as well, somewhere much further away with offsite imaging storage.

Failures of electronic medical records and PACS are not a common occurrence but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a contingency plan set in place. Planning in advance for such a disaster can have an tremendous effect on the overall impact on your clinical operations. The safest course of action is to make certain that backups of your patient record archives are stored in an offsite imaging storage location, while keeping your medical office in compliance with Federal HIPAA regulations.

Every electronic data storage system from DICOM Solutions is custom designed to work with all standard peripherals, from disk drives, portable hard drives, CDs to DVDs. Your staff will be fully equipped with an adequate amount of patient record back-ups in case the worst happens. You even have the option of your health care office using backup tapes. The offsite imaging storage systems from DICOM Solutions allow you to download patient archives in from old tape library equipment so as to speed your PACS disaster recovery.

The confidentiality, integrity and security of patient data is not just a good idea – it is required by law. In order to be HIPPA compliant, your data must be secure and with duplicated records stored at an off-site location in case of unforeseen disaster. Offsite radiology storage is a safeguard against the threat of total data loss.

No matter how your offsite radiology storage management plan is executed, duplicating your PACS system’s precious information is not an option – it’s a necessity.