EMC Healthcare Solutions to accelerate region's clinical productivity

Initiatives such as Dubai Healthcare City, the number of new hospitals being constructed in the Gulf, and events such as the Arab Health Exhibition, are driving regional growth in the medical services sector. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone has an estimated base of more than 300 hospitals with more than 46,000 beds available.

"The region's dramatically growing healthcare sector is contributing significantly to the rise in the amount of data that needs to be managed across the Middle East, including medical records, and X-rays and related images," said Mohammed Amin, regional manager, EMC Middle East. "Our mission for the coming year is to ensure that healthcare providers understand the practical value of EMC's information storage and enterprise content management solutions in order to better handle this explosion of digital data."
"By applying EMC's ILM methodologies to store and manage patient images and records, providers can make that information accessible anywhere and anytime it is needed."

"Our commitment to advancing information storage and management for healthcare organizations in the Middle East is illustrated by the fact that we already have solutions developed with picture archiving communications systems (PACS) and electronic health record (EHR) partners readily available in the region. The latter can help streamline clinical radiology workflow and meet regulatory requirements," he added.

EMC information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions that are integrated with leading PACS and EHR applications help radiologists and other caregivers gain immediate access to live and archived images and patient records, speeding up patient care decision- making.

The new cost-effective, feature-packed EMC CLARiiON AX100 networked storage system, gives smaller healthcare organizations with limited IT resources access to the same sophisticated applications, like PACS or EHR, that are deployed at the largest hospitals and health networks.

The leading capabilities of EMC DiskXtender software, allows healthcare providers to easily migrate inactive, digital images to more cost-effective storage, while maintaining transparent access while the EMC Documentum Enterprise Content Management platform effectively enables management of millions of documents and images residing across a healthcare organization.
Research firm Enterprise Strategy Group predicts that data generated by compliant records in the healthcare industry will increase from 68 petabytes (68,000 terabytes) in 2003 to 238 petabytes in 2006. Additionally, consolidating and networking information to achieve a unified view of patient data can yield significant benefits in improving clinical workflow, reducing length of hospital stay and enhancing overall patient experience.

By improving online clinical workflow and building fully digitized and networked healthcare environments, physicians gain immediate access to live and archived PACS and EHR data to make real-time critical clinical decisions. EMC's products, services, and solutions enable healthcare and life sciences organizations to create a seamless, scalable and secure information flow from drug discovery to patient care.

"Our software is already being utilised by several of the top healthcare organizations in the world. In 2005, we're set to ensure that medical institutions in the Middle East do not get left behind," concluded Amin.