29 As healthcare organizations grow and merge, they must deal not only with vast volumes of data but also a data storage problem that’s been exacerbated by a patchwork of disparate tools and solutions in disparate locations. This mishmash makes it harder to find compatible storage solutions, which the industry desperately needs. Let’s look at the current challenges and solutions to this important issue. The challenges of healthcare data By some estimates, the healthcare industry produces 30% of the world’s electronic data. It’s estimated that by 2025, the compound annual growth rate of healthcare data will reach 36% — that’s 6% faster than manufacturing, 10% faster than financial services, and 11% faster than media and entertainment. Healthcare practitioners must use electronic patient records per the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This creates a wealth of digital information about patients, practices and procedures. In addition, there’s also been a significant pandemic-driven rise in telehealth in the past two years — increasing the volume of health data as well as concerns about data security. Limited flexibility, shadow IT issues, tremendous cost-savings pressure and a variety of security and privacy concerns all result from this proliferation of health data. Some of the biggest challenges include: Ransomware: 34% of healthcare organizations were hit by ransomware in the last year. Silos: Different departments often use different PACS (picture archiving and communication systems) and storage solutions, making consistent data management, security and availability a huge challenge. Continued consolidation and M&A activity, which means bringing different locations with their own unique solutions, systems and tools in place — and mountains of data. The solution for healthcare data storage silos: Modern object storage So, how do healthcare organizations grapple with these challenges while keeping their data securely stored for the long term and maintaining regulatory compliance? Scality’s Candida Valois explores this topic in-depth in her piece “Solving Healthcare’s Patchwork Problem with a New Storage Approach” for Healthcare Business Today. Read the article in full to discover the many reasons why software-based, scale-out object storage solutions are seeing increased adoption in the healthcare industry. Real-world successes within healthcare organizations around the globe Healthcare organizations around the world are already benefiting from Scality solutions. One of France’s largest academic hospital groups is securing massive growing volumes of data within their own private “health cloud.” A nationally-ranked U.S. health system has simplified its medical imaging environment with maximum flexibility and freedom from hardware lock-in. And, by building a universal medical archive with Scality, a pioneering research hospital in Switzerland is turning big data into an asset for fighting cancer and other complex diseases.
