IT, healthcare firms need to cooperate over big data issues (page 1 of 2)

By Jay Savaiano, Director of Business Development, Healthcare Vertical at CommVault

Healthcare's pain with Big Data starts with the sheer volume generated by a growing number of solutions being deployed in both clinical and operational environments. Solutions such as electronic medical records, expansive picture archiving and communication systems, operational applications in support of time tracking, finance, HR and messaging all compound the demands on healthcare IT to support complex Big Data environments.

According to IDC, the world generated more than one zettabyte (ZB), or one million petabytes, of data in 2010. By 2014, growth is predicted to reach 7 ZBs a year, fuelled in part by the rapid rise of machine-generated data. Clearly, exponential data growth, diversity of data types and never-ending demands for optimised retention will create the perfect storm unless healthcare IT steers toward a more holistic approach to data management.

Technology solution providers that understand these challenges are best positioned to become valued and trusted advisors for healthcare organisations. Solution providers need to assist healthcare organisations in embracing the core principles for holistic data management and retention by viewing backups and archives more strategically while leveraging integrated solutions. As a result, healthcare institutions can lower storage costs, mitigate compliance risks and extract maximum value from information in ways that produce valuable clinical and operational benefits.

Cross the backup and archive divide

For too many healthcare organisations, backup and archive functions are deployed and maintained as separate "silos" within an overall data management strategy. Multiple, disparate hardware and software products typically manage these data silos, which leads to duplicate copies of information that must be protected and preserved.

Unfortunately, effective and efficient healthcare recordkeeping has been severely constrained by data silos, traditional approaches and legacy systems, which now make it nearly impossible to streamline the search of information for legal discovery and compliance audits, not to mention the inability to expedite responses to individual privacy access requests. As a result, proper personal health information policies are enforced through violations and penalties rather than organisational best practices and technology innovations.

Compounding the problem is the fact that different groups are traditionally responsible for data protection and preservation. Storage and backup administrators oversee data protection and therefore are heavily focused on the impact Big Data has on backup windows and recovery SLAs. While information architects, clinical application specialists and compliance officers are fixated on how Big Data affects retention, discovery and information governance policies, they usually operate without much regard for how these functions can also be extended to address backups.

A chasm exists between backup and archive in on-going Big Data conversations. According to Gartner, backup complements archive and vice versa—yet backup administrators and information architects traditionally haven't spoken the same language, and most tools and technologies address either one or the other of these disciplines.

Take a united front on data convergence

Thanks to advances in data management technology, enterprise-wide data retention is now within reach of healthcare organisations.