In this article Jonathon Blocker writes about dicom storage server. technology.
Every medical facility is concerned with meeting HIPPA regulations in place for the storage of medical records. HIPPA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law that was passed by the United States Congress in 1996. Part of the Act puts in place national standards for electronic health care documents, which include provisions for privacy and security of health records. Many medical facilities find that switching over to digital imaging from film imaging makes the tasks of archiving and disaster recovery much easier in terms of being HIPPA compliant.
Dicom Storage
Medical offices and imaging centers that utilize Dicom or dicom converters with their analog equipment have many options available in terms of dicom image storage. Dicom storage can happen at individual workstations that are set up with PACS systems. You have the flexibility to select dicom image storage that allows you to copy digital files to a cd or dvd. This is a quick and easy way to backup digital files on individual computers.
You can also save digital images directly to a dicom archive. A dicom archive works in a similar manner to your personal computer's archival system. The central dicom storage server is home to a database that you set up for storing medical digital images. From the dicom archive, digital files can be retrieved at individual workstations in your medical facility. This type of dicom storage also makes it easy to distribute medical digital images as needed.
Disaster Recovery And Dicom Storage
Disasters of a catastrophic nature, such as can occur with floods, fires or hurricanes, mean that your medical facility will need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, as well as one that is HIPPA compliant. Your dicom image storage solution will play a big part in that plan. Your digital files can be backed up daily onto CDs and DVDs as well as your onsite server quickly and easily at your computer workstation. They can also be archived at a secure offsite location, such as your dicom storage server. In this way, the records would be immediately accessible offsite if you could not reach them onsite. Automation of the backup process is entirely possible when you are backing up to your offsite dicom storage server.
It is also entirely feasible to start small and grow with digital image storage. You can select an initial capacity dicom storage solution at a price that fits your budget, and then build upon that system to expand it as you have need and finances to do so.
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Thank you for the great article.
With the national interest in Healthcare IT, more and more companies are offering different types of long term offsite storage of image files. When there are too many studies for CDs and DVDs, an offsite service becomes more attractive.
Focusing only on the need for offsite storage, most any company will do. Being custodians of personal, confidential and critical information drive the need to ensure that the data remains secure.
Based on your experience, are the following items appropriate and/or complete?:
• Where all is study/patient data stored (database, tracking & log file, etc)?
• Who all in your company will have access to the studies/patient information?
• Have those employees had appropriate background checks?
• What sort of audit/access logs are kept? Are they available for review?
• Do you work with any vendors who may have access to the studies/information?
• What security procedures are in place to protect the study/patient information?
• What sort of backup/redundancy is in place to protect the data?
• Are secure delete methods used when studies are moved from a drive to a different location?
• Are there additional costs to retrieve/restore studies?
And finally, do you think that it is OK to request SOPs from potential vendors, and if so, which ones are critical?
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