SGI and Comdisco, Inc. today announced an agreement to develop managed storage solutions for the healthcare industry.
According to the companies, the purpose of the agreement is to provide a safe, accessible, and disaster proof alternative means of storing medical records. Digital medical images will be stored in data centers and accessed via a secure network. Customers using a picture archiving and communications system (PACS) can take advantage of the SGI and Comdisco solution by managing healthcare professionals’ digitized storage environment for them. Those customers not utilizing a PACS also benefit by gaining access to a safe, cost-effective means for storing digital images.
A storage and archiving solution, Comdisco’s Enterprise Access Device (EAD) provides the mechanism for pulling medical records off the PACS for managed storage and retrieval back to the PACS. The computing and storage engine for the EAD is a UNIX(R) OS-based SGI(TM) Origin(TM) family server or Windows NT(R) OS-based SGI(TM) 1200 running SGI(TM) synchronized data mover software.
“As hospitals continue to migrate to digital technology, they’re becoming increasingly burdened by storage demands from both a cost and a resource perspective,” said Mike Kennedy, general manager for Comdisco Healthcare Group. “Comdisco’s solutions in cooperation with SGI allow healthcare providers to get out from under this. We provide the storage technology, and we keep it current; customers simply request more storage when they need it, and we can manage the entire process for them off-site and ensure that their data remains protected and accessible.”
The University of Kentucky Hospital is the first hospital to test the hosted storage services.