As a major imaging systems vendor, AGFA Healthcare is highly aware of how important the design and specification of their customerโs underlying infrastructure in relation to the performance and overall operation of their imaging systems. Learn how AGFA Healthcare certified HPE Alletra MP, Apollo 4000, and Qumulo for their medical imaging infrastructure.
โBy Nicholas โNickโ White, HPE Global Storage Solutions PM
The medical imaging data challenge
You know the reality: Healthcare represents approximately 30% of total global data generation, and according to RBC Capital Markets, will sustain a CAGR of approximately 36% by the year 2025. Thatโs a significant slice โ almost one third โ of the global market. Iโm here to discuss the highlights around this rapid development and growing implementation medical imaging technologies that is driving the rapid growth of medical data.
Net-new electronic medical records management systems are still being rolled out in many regions of the world, but the implementation of these patient record systems is not the greatest driver of the global healthcare data growth. The various medical imaging procedures critical to modern diagnosis and patient care are the greater driver of growth due to the larger typical file-size medical imaging diagnostic data and increasing frequency of use across healthcare organizations in larger metropolitan areas.
Factors driving the growth of imaging data
- Advancing imaging technologies that generate ever larger study files.
- Increased use of medical imaging procedures during diagnosis and treatment.
- Legislation typically mandates extremely lengthy retention periods for medical images.
Cached image performance vs. image Long-Term Archive (LTA)
The growing demand for storage capacity is not the only challenge healthcare providers face in storing and managing their medical image data. While the vast percentage of images are likely to have been archived, the large images held in the image cache need to be available for rapid retrieval with โtime-to-desktopโ being a key performance metric impacting physician efficiency. Also, with the growing demand for health information access and patient mobility, a large provider may also need to ensure image access from multiple remote locations.
Typically, a PACS (picture archiving and communication system) or VNA (vendor-neutral archive[i]) managing imaging data will require a 2-to-3 tier storage architecture, depending on the vendor- specific architecture. Newly generated images are held locally in an โimage cacheโ while under physician review for a period of weeks, months, or potentially more than a year โ before being moved to lower cost โcoolerโ long-term archive (LTA) storage. This archive storage may be the imaging dataโs final storage destination, or a precursor to an even lower-cost, longer-term storage archive tier.
Therefore the vast percentage of a providerโs images are likely to have been archived and held in large capacity, highly scalable storage that ensures the data is secure and immutable for an indefinite period of time.
AGFA Healthcare customer reference architectures
Leading medical imaging systems vendor AGFA Healthcare has a comprehensive diagnostic technology portfolio of advanced high-resolution imaging solutions complete with image analytics plus the sophisticated workflow and enterprise image management functionality to better support the effective provision of care and the operational efficiency of the provider.
As a major imaging systems vendor, AGFA Healthcare is highly aware of how important the design and specification of their customerโs underlying infrastructure is to the performance, and overall operation of their imaging systems.
To ensure the efficient performance of their customersโ systems, AGFA Healthcare provides comprehensive customer guidance on the architecture, sizing, and configuration of suitable infrastructure necessary to manage their data foundation. To ensure optimal accuracy of this guidance, AGFA Healthcare has also built and maintains a program of platform testing and design of right-sized reference architectures.
AGFA Healthcare HPE reference architectures
HPE works closely with AGFA Healthcare in Belgium to ensure maximum customer benefit through unified guidance regarding infrastruture. AGFA Healthcare
Based upon the performance of these products, AGFA Healthcare is now offering SML, MED, and LGE reference architectures covering single and multi-site (with synchronous or synchronous replication) facilitating up to four million studies per annum.
The reference architectures are now available as part of the AGFA Healthcare customer agreement, or directly from your Hewlett Packard Enterprise Account Manager or authorized HPE Channel Partner.
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[i] A VNA solution primarily focuses on centralized storage, management, and long-term archiving of medical images and associated data from various imaging systems, regardless of vendor or format.
Meet HPE Global Storage Solutions PM Nicholas โNickโ White
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