The workhorse of IT: provider organizations have specific requirements for this behind-the-scenes technology, and equally rigorous demands of their suppliers - Data Storage

Health Management Technology, Sept, 2003 by Robin Blair, William Porter

In an era when CPOE, wireless devices the size of your pinky and all point-of-care applications are the glitzy, must-have technologies everyone wants, pity poor data storage. In comparison to the more glamorous front-runners, it looks like a plain, almost-ran Jane.

Which isn't bad for an industry segment that McKinsey (and Dataquest) estimate at $47 billion in just five years, projecting 74 percent growth between 2002 and 2007. While it isn't the caviar of healthcare IT, data storage remains fundamental to successful healthcare operations and information management. Those in charge of healthcare delivery organizations have very definite preferences and intentions for its future.

Primary Concerns

Last fall, Porter Research of Atlanta interviewed almost 50 senior-level healthcare executives from multihospital systems and integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and from community hospitals. The pursuit was not to generate a formalized survey, but rather to identify trends and directions in senior-level planning and strategy.

The storage methodologies that were examined included DVD storage, DVD-RAM storage devices, network attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SANs), tape jukeboxes, CD libraries, magnetic optical disks and redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID), as well as outsourced and ASP storage and additional hard drive devices. No surprises there. But one moderate surprise was that both community hospitals and IDNs identified the computerized patient record (CPR) as a vehicle of storage, perhaps because it can capture, contain and store thousands of data on the longevity of each patient's individual medical record and treatment plan--and, at the same time, identified the CPR as an application requiring storage.

Overall, IDNs and community hospitals voice many of the same responses (Figure 1): CIOs typically are responsible for meeting data storage requirements; both types of organizations anticipate a healthy increase in storage needs and more IT spending on storage technologies; both feel their current storage budget is adequate.

But written between the lines of some responses are finite differences that point to different landscapes and probably to different types of decisions on storage methodology and utilization in the future. When asked to identify their top storage concerns, IDNs cited cost of ownership and interoperability as their top two; the time necessary to deploy a given storage technology throughout the enterprise also appeared within the top five concerns. These responses reflect, predictably, an enterprise approach that focuses first on the multidimensional needs of a complex organization and secondarily on meeting the needs of individual departments.

A different picture emerged at community hospitals, where senior executives zeroed right in. Security was their top storage concern, a concern that didn't even get on the radar screen at IDNs. Overall, IDN executives felt "moderately" well-equipped for disaster recovery, but community hospital executives felt less so. A few said they had already experienced a data disaster in their hospitals. One identified a failure in the computerized medical records system that took 72 hours to recover from, while another said, "We have had a couple of high-profile system outages that a highly available storage subsystem would have averted for us." Apparently, anything or anyone that compromises the access to and availability of data within the community hospital setting is an issue that looms large for stand-alone hospital CIOs.

Beyond Budget

Both IDNs and community hospitals spend money--and plan to continue doing so--on storage. IDNs reported spending 7 percent to 15 percent of their total IT budget on storage, while community hospitals fell in the 2 percent to 15 percent range. But both groups predicted the need for significant increases in coming years: IDNs expect a 5 percent to 25 percent spending increase, while community hospitals predicted necessary expenditure increases all the way up to 50 percent.

Regardless of budget increases, the array of storage technologies used by IDNs and community hospital varied, based predictably on the nature of the organization (Figure 2).

When it comes to everyday utilization of storage technology for financial and clinical applications, IDNs and community hospitals share more similarities in the financial arena than they do in clinical concerns (Figure 3). While both sets of organizations essentially cite the same areas of significance, but with different rankings, one thing is sure: Both community hospitals and IDNs protect the hardcore financial data--AR/AP/ GL--at a top priority level.

Assessing Suppliers

Healthcare organizations don't exhibit a broad awareness of the multitude of storage vendors and suppliers available. From more than 20 vendor names offered by Porter Research for recognition purposes, only a predictable handful emerged as those that were well-known, including Cisco, Dell, IBM, Veritas and EMC.