UK patient records stored on IBM grid

UK health providers could soon be outsourcing the storage of patient records to IBM

UK hospitals and medical institutions could soon be outsourcing the storage of patient records to an IBM storage grid.

The vendor’s new Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) offers storage, software, servers and other services to hospitals, clinics, research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. It is designed to provide a multi-site storage archive for medical images, patient records and other healthcare information.

IBM did not elaborate on its data security or encryption methods, but did say that information will be accessed via a web browser, presumably using a secure sockets layer (SSL) virtual private network.

Craig Butler, IBM business executive for archive storage, acknowledged that most large medical facilities typically buy their own storage hardware. But he argued that managing vast amounts of data is often too complex and time consuming for in-house staff IT departments to do cost effectively.

“The per-terabyte cost of storage is going down, but the problem is the people cost of just managing all that data,” he said.

Hospitals signing up to GMAS will access data stored on either disk or tape depending on speed of retrieval requirements. Records and files are striped across multiple volumes using RAID 5, and replicated to additional sites to provide a measure of disaster recovery.

GMAS uses a combination of IBM’s System Storage EXP3000, System Storage Grid Access Manager, System x 3650 servers and IBM Global Technology Storage Services.

IBM did not reveal specific pricing details, but says a single server with a single license and around 3TB of storage will cost around $6,000. Based on US customers buying habits so far however, the average deal is around $60,000 for multiple servers and applications spread across multiple sites, said Butler.