VA Medical Center Benefits from Storage Software - Government Activity

Health Management Technology, Dec, 1999 by Derek Drawhorn

The VA Medical Center in Houston, TX, is one of the largest facilities in the VA system. It provides healthcare to more than 50,000 veterans in the Houston metropolitan area, in addition to referred veterans from around the country.

Historically, the VA Medical Center used only permanent storage media like WORM (write once, read many) to store information such as patient files in an unalterable format. Using this system for all data storage created an inefficient use of physical storage space at the Houston facility, particularly considering that the hardware needed to support the optical disks is large and space consuming.

Storage Costs Soaring

Furthermore, the optical platters within the jukebox (hardware that houses the platters) had to be manually removed and replaced at the rate of about four cartridges per day. Because of the hard and soft costs associated with removing and replacing the WORM platters, the Houston VA found their storage costs soaring.

Since some of their data had to remain in optical form, the VA began searching for a data storage solution that would still support optical media while at the same time supporting a less expensive medium, such as tape.

The solution was found in OTG Software's DiskXtender. It intelligently manages data storage on tape, optical, and CD media within one product code, distinguishing it from other software. With this system, the Houston VA is able to ensure that all data is available to any authorized user at any network desktop.

In addition to storing medical documents, records, film, and other information, the facility is currently adopting the system as a storage solution in the accounting, operations, and inventory departments.

Quickly Writes Data

Houston intends to push the VA in Washington, DC to place OTG's data storage management on an approved list for archiving solutions in all of the VA Medical Centers in the country. This solution has enabled a system that can quickly write data and automatically migrate it to storage media, allowing the VA staff to focus on more critical patient-related issues. Physical storage space has also been saved with the new tape system occupying about the same space for 13 TB as the older optical 1.2 GB jukebox.

Furthermore, since this product supports both tape and the VA's optical system, storage media are only removed and replaced from the system weekly--a significant soft cost savings. Houston VA has gained significant cost savings with DiskXtender. More than half a million dollars would have been spent on maintaining the old storage methods in the facility.

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Derek Drawhorn is director of Imaging Services for VA Medical Center, Houston, TX.