Klinikum Altenburger Land GmbH

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The growth in electronic patient records and clinical storage systems has been a boon for citizens and healthcare professionals alike. But the sheer volume of data that requires secure but accessible storage has put additional strains on the information systems of hospitals. Add to that the need to align data with the workflows of the institution, and it’s little wonder that many healthcare organizations are updating their storage systems.

One such institution is Klinikum Altenburger Land in the city of Altenburg, Germany, which has deployed a tiered storage solution based on the Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager (SAM) software alongside its new picture archiving and communications system (PACS) from Visus, a German company specializing in medical imaging systems.

Using Web technology, the PACS and StorageTek SAM-based tiered storage solution delivers images to doctors' workstations and operating rooms throughout the hospital in a fraction of a second. Replacing traditional x-rays, the images are available in PACS immediately after they are generated and can be interpreted the same day, drastically accelerating the treatment process. These images, which can also be preselected by a department, form the basis for the medical history service. In emergencies, healthcare professionals are able to interpret x-ray images from home.

IT service provider Bechtle and Sun worked with the hospital to implement the StorageTek SAM software. The deployment team focused on the main challenge of the project, which was to map the hospital's complex processes to IT-based storage workflows running under the new system. This requirement was achieved by establishing preset rules: the time the data was created, the source, and the legally required retention period among others. Based on these criteria, the StorageTek SAM software automatically distributes information from various applications to media including hard disks, SAN or tapes. This includes a Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server and a Sun Fire V210 standby server both running the Solaris 10 operating system, and a storage area network based on a 12TB Sun StorageTek 2540 SATA array, a StorageTek D240 Media Tray and a StorageTek FLX210 enterprise storage system supported by StorageTek Common Array Manager and SANtricity software.

Above all, the StorageTek SAM software offers secure, automated storage and archiving of PACS data and supports an increasing number of other clinical applications. For instance, digitized medical records, ultrasound images, endoscopy images, CT scans, and EEG and sleep lab data can all be kept secure on the tiered storage solution. This approach is highly effective. "With the StorageTek SAM software, we can use our full capacities to their best advantage, migrate to new hardware without major expense, and automatically recover all data in the event of a failure," says Reiner Selent, IT director, Klinikum Altenburger Land GmbH.

There were other convincing arguments for selecting Sun, according to Selent: “We looked at hospitals that have used the StorageTek SAM software for some time, and they confirmed that the system was highly robust and reliable. Another crucial factor was the possibility of seamlessly integrating our PACS system with this technology."

For revision-proof, long-term archiving, the hospital uses once-writable media, which are then kept in a strong room. This helps ensure compliance with the legal requirements stipulating that digital medical records must be archived for 30 years and radiology and ultrasound images for 10 years.

Because PACS costs considerably less and requires much less manpower than analog film technology, the number of radiological examinations has grown rapidly. The system was originally designed for 20 million files, but its capacity has grown to store 60 million. In the radiology department alone, 30,000 new files are added every day.

Unlike other solutions, the StorageTek SAM software does not use a middleware layer, proprietary formats, or protocols. Data is stored as standardized UNIX files and can be read and processed using common system tools. Moreover, the IT department can optimize the StorageTek SAM software rules and integrate new applications without expensive external help. In fact, it took just two months to launch the system. "Bechtle and Sun are familiar with the requirements in the medical environment, so it was possible to complete the project quickly," says Selent.

Selent is now looking ahead to a future when hospitals will be even more dependent on IT than before: "With the StorageTek SAM software, we have created a sustainable basis for rapid data growth that is difficult to foresee." Video sequences, cardiac catheterization studies, and planned video towers for minimally invasive surgery are a few examples of new medical technologies that will require even more storage memory. But thanks to the reliability and scalability of its Sun technology, Klinikum Altenburger Land can confidently connect additional systems with digital data requiring archiving to the StorageTek SAM software as required.