White Paper. IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare. 89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor. New York, NY

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1 89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY White Paper IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare

2 Printed in the United States of America Copyright 2015 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use. The information contained in this document is based on IBM provided materials and independent research and was aggregated for Edison Group, Inc. by the Edison Group Analyst team. All products are trademarks of their respective owners. First Publication: August 2015 Produced by: Neal Ekker, Author; Leonard Schramm, Editor; Barry Cohen, Editor-in-Chief

3 Table of Contents Healthcare is Moving Faster... 1 When Every Second Counts, So Does Storage Performance... 1 The Value of Speed... 1 Storage Performance Affects Healthcare Outcomes... 3 Medical Records... 3 Medical Images... 4 Medical Reports... 4 IBM FlashSystem Accelerates Positive Outcomes... 5 Use Case Benefits of IBM FlashSystem... 6 Speeding Healthcare Success... 7

4 Healthcare is Moving Faster When Every Second Counts, So Does Storage Performance Ever mindful of the close relationship between speed and quality of care, the healthcare industry has been investing in electronic medical record (EMR) solutions, digital imaging applications, and other sophisticated information technology (IT) for years. In the process, healthcare IT professionals have discovered that data storage plays a crucial role in keeping all of their software applications running at peak efficiency and that traditional, disk-based storage systems are simply too slow to keep pace with the speed of modern healthcare. Healthcare enterprises that provide quality service while controlling costs will lead the market and drive innovation. IT solutions play a critical role in helping providers and payers deliver quality service and control escalating costs by improving productivity, efficiency, and traceability. To get the most value from their information technology, healthcare organizations are leveraging the performance, reliability, and cost advantages of IBM FlashSystem. The Value of Speed Emergency rooms, doctors offices, and rural clinics are just a few of the settings where fast access to medical data can help healthcare providers enhance care and reduce costs. Getting more patient data to the point of care faster enables care givers to make better decisions. Rapid delivery of medical information also plays a vital role in enabling patient-centric healthcare, an emerging care delivery model in which providers and payers use smartphones, tablets, and other consumer technologies to keep patients better informed about diagnoses and treatments. The model engages patients more closely in their care, resulting in better outcomes and fewer preventable readmissions. High-speed data delivery can accelerate clinical workflows too. That s an increasingly important consideration as healthcare providers move toward accountable care arrangements in which physicians, specialists, and hospitals collaborate to optimize care and minimize spending. As the healthcare industry evolves toward the patient-centric care model, coordination of care and the associated clinical workflows will become Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 1

5 critical success factors. Real-time access to medical data can radically improve the efficiency of those workflows. Providers and payers are beginning to reap impressive rewards from Big Data and healthcare analytics. Valuable insights are buried in healthcare databases. Mining patient and claim records for clues about which risk factors are most dangerous or which treatments are most effective can help healthcare enterprises both enhance care and save money. Finding valuable analytics nuggets can make a life-saving difference for patients while improving overall efficiency, but speed is of the essence. Speed also counts when it comes to safeguarding patient data, which is why more and more healthcare organizations are deploying security monitoring solutions that can detect potential breaches in real time. If something malicious is happening, the enterprise can catch it while it s occurring, not after. But meeting that goal takes truly high-performance technology. Every healthcare system is moving faster: Figure 1: Healthcare Systems and Networks Are Moving Faster Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 2

6 Storage Performance Affects Healthcare Outcomes Healthcare is in the midst of a refocus on patient outcomes as the one definitive measure of system success. From the IT perspective, a number of evolving requirements must be met. First, because of the initiative to bring more data faster to the point of service, data agility must increase dramatically. Next, both the volume and the richness of medical information are accelerating medical imaging, for example, is employed more often and is steadily growing in resolution, resulting in larger file sizes. Finally, in addition to the reporting requirements to comply with myriad regulations, the healthcare industry is relying on a wider range of evolving data analytics to uncover trends, accelerate research, and drive greater system efficiency. Every one of these healthcare IT requirements is directly affected by the performance of the backend data storage. Medical Records Each patient in the healthcare system has multiple sets of records, from immunization charts to complex images. When patients are admitted to a hospital, ideally their medical history is also admitted with them. But according to IBM research, less than one percent of US hospitals support a complete EMR system that shares medical records consistently and seamlessly throughout the institution and also among institutions. Nurses use mobile carts with built-in laptops to chart information regarding their patients. Every time a nurse checks a patient, dispenses medication, or takes vital signs, information is logged into a laptop wirelessly connected to the hospital s network. This data is recorded into a backend database where information regarding the patient is stored. Every time a nurse inputs information or pulls information about a patient or client, they use the database. Every time doctors access this information, whether in the hospital, at their practice, or from their home, they use the database. Every time administrators access this information, they use the database. For hospitals with hundreds of patients and hundreds of employees, this puts tremendous pressure on the database applications. Generating high numbers of both read and write requests leads to longer response times (latency) when accessing traditional hard disk drives. This input/output (I/O) bottleneck can be reduced significantly, if not eliminated, by replacing disk drives with flash storage. This reduction in response time enables greater productivity and efficiency, leading to better patient care and lower operating costs. Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 3

7 Medical Images Medical images represent 30 percent of the information stored on the world s computers. These images and file types result from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound (US), Full Field Digital Mammography (FFDM), Computed Tomography (CT Scans), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and a host of other medical imaging techniques. The number and resolution of these images increases daily. As the volume and complexity of these images grow, medical personnel must access and sort the data in a timely manner to serve their patients. Online analytical processing (OLAP) applications are often added to this mix to reveal trends and derive more meaning and value from the data. Complicating matters are the growing choices that patients have among doctors and healthcare institutions. Files must be retrieved quickly and efficiently for sharing and transferring. Saving and retrieving images using a traditional hard drive array slows significantly as the transfer size and number of transfer requests increase. But by deploying flash storage, transfers can happen orders of magnitude faster. Medical Reports Healthcare IT is entering an era of technology overhaul as healthcare and insurance requirements meet government regulations. Medical reporting creates a significant overhead and cost burden within the healthcare industry. This trend promises to escalate as the demand for new services and broader access continues to increase. Information regarding patient billing, patient privacy, patient medical records, compliance reporting, and countless other reports are generated on a daily basis. These administrative reports are pulled from the same databases that support the everyday activities of the physicians, nurses, and patients. Many of these reports are run as endof-day batch processes. As the patient load, reporting requirements, and regulations increase, batch processes grow in time and cost until they exceed both schedules and budgets. Once again, flash-based storage is the most effective solution to improve the performance and lower the cost of batch processing. Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 4

8 IBM FlashSystem Accelerates Positive Outcomes The IBM FlashSystem family of all-flash storage platforms includes FlashSystem 900 and FlashSystem V9000 arrays. Powered by IBM FlashCore technology, the FlashSystem 900 delivers the extreme performance, enterprise reliability, and operational efficiencies required to gain competitive advantage in today s dynamic marketplace. Adding to these capabilities, FlashSystem V9000 offers the advantages of software defined storage at the speed of flash. These all-flash storage systems deliver the full capabilities of IBM FlashCore technology s hardware accelerated architecture, MicroLatency modules, and advanced flash management coupled with a rich set of features found in only the most advanced enterprise storage solutions, including IBM Real-time Compression, virtualization, dynamic tiering, thin provisioning, snapshots, cloning, replication, data copy services, and high-availability configurations. Most important to addressing the ever escalating healthcare EMR, imaging, and analytics workloads, among many others, FlashCore technology enables IBM FlashSystem to accelerate response times, delivering reads and writes in the hundred microsecond range. Storage latency affects the performance and efficiency of mission critical healthcare applications. When hundreds of patients or their healthcare providers are simultaneously accessing and updating EMR information around a hospital campus or from around the globe, database response times are the throttle that determines how soon the data arrives in surgery or customer support. Few industries outside of the financial sector may be as storage latency sensitive as the healthcare system. No storage array delivers lower latency at a lower cost and with higher reliability and efficiency than IBM FlashSystem. With IBM FlashSystem, applications respond in microseconds, not milliseconds. This means doctors spend less time on administration and more time with patients. Likewise, staff productivity increases, whether booting a virtual desktop or processing billing claims. Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 5

9 Use Case Benefits of IBM FlashSystem IBM FlashSystem directly benefits a wide range of use cases and applications across the healthcare environment: Electronic Medical Records Ensure consistent treatment quality Integrate with leading EMR solutions Billing Applications and Compliance Deploy a predictable user experience Maintain compliance across regulations and policies while exceeding SLAs Medical Imaging Systems Deliver real-time image views Streamline patient and care data into one complete and consistent view. Figure 2: IBM FlashSystem Offers Many Benefits to Healthcare Customers Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 6

10 Speeding Healthcare Success More and more, information technology is helping drive positive outcomes within the healthcare industry. Patient information needs to arrive at the point of service quickly, EMR information must be shared efficiently, medical images need to arrive in surgeries and doctors offices in near real-time, reports must be accurate and secure, and analytics need both depth and speed. These requirements demand high velocity IT systems, and the performance of the backend data storage directly impacts the effectiveness of the solution. IBM FlashSystem is redefining the dynamics of data storage and quickly becoming the new tool of choice for leading healthcare enterprises determined to succeed and thrive. Whether you are simply replacing spinning disks or building a new storage solution to address 21st century healthcare challenges, the economics are clear. IBM FlashSystem will provide the data storage performance, reliability, and efficiency you need at a pricepoint that meets your budget today and enables future growth. With over 8,000 employees dedicated to healthcare, including more than 60 medical doctors and 350 healthcare professionals, IBM has completed thousands of successful healthcare transformation initiatives ranging from small hospitals to national healthcare projects. IBM holds more than 600 patents in the life sciences, healthcare, and medical device fields. IBM has been an active participant with governments working to lay the foundations of a 21st century healthcare system. Together with our healthcare clients and partners, IBM is redefining value and success in healthcare to help build a smarter healthcare industry. Edison: IBM FlashSystem Industry Spotlight: Healthcare Page 7