The 'Data Management Healthcheck 2010', a global survey conducted by a healthcare data management software company, reveals that secure data management is the healthcare industry's most pressing concern as hospitals transit from paper-based health records to electronic systems.

Launched on 2 February 2010 and remained open until 31 March 2010, the survey on hospitals' ongoing strategies for managing their Information Technology (IT) systems, observed that the top IT spending priority for 2010 was disaster recovery (44 %), closely followed by Picture Archiving and Communication Systems [PACS] (38 %) and digitising paper records (35 %).

The Marketing Director of the company, John McCann said: "The healthcare industry's data environment is notoriously complex, with most hospitals navigating a variety of systems from a range of vendors for managing different types of clinical data in different locations, both on and off hospital premises. When healthcare information systems go down, bringing that information back online is an intricate process. Healthcare IT professionals need to know which applications and data have to be reinstated, and in which order. Given this complexity, it is not surprising that disaster recovery is the top IT investment priority in healthcare today." 

Tony Cotterill, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President of the company, added: "Roughly 20 to 30 % of all the world's storage resides in healthcare. Yet hospitals often find themselves accepting storage and disaster recovery solutions from other industry sectors that do not necessarily understand and accommodate the healthcare industry's uniquely complex data environment. As hospitals continue transitioning towards fully electronic patient records, they would be wise to investigate storage, data management and disaster recovery solutions tailored specifically to meet their own organisational needs."

As the company reported in May 2010, the Data Management Healthcheck also found that over two-thirds (69 %) of healthcare organisations expected their data volumes to increase in 2010. Of those, 65 % said PACS imaging files were the main culprits, followed by files held in the Electronic Patient Record (45.5 %) and scanned documents, e.g. proof of insurance and healthcare proxy (43 %). In spite of rising data volumes, only a quarter (26 %) claimed to have full archiving capabilities that migrated content to the appropriate storage as dictated by their pre-defined policies.

Only 15 % of the survey participants listed cloud storage among their top three investment priorities, in spite of the recent buzz around cloud computing. And only 12 % prioritised green IT, confirming the company's report of April 2010 that green IT is currently more of an aspiration than a reality at most hospitals.

 Further information:

• Original news article - BridgeHead Software
• Related news article - HealthTech Wire