HIPAA News

Healthcare Services Provider ZirMed Turns to Caringo for Fixed Content Storage

(April 30, 2007)--  ZirMed, provider of revenue cycle management solutions to healthcare providers, has selected Caringo CAStor to accommodate its dramatically growing data load and create a fully compliant and massively scalable archive of highly sensitive records.

ZirMed's web-based suite of solutions assists healthcare providers, insurance companies and patients through the reimbursement cycle with services such as insurance benefits verification, merchant processing, claims management, electronic remittance advice, and check processing. ZirMed's processing systems must support nearly a quarter of a million transactions per day via electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions, a number which is growing almost exponentially.

Named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the US, ZirMed required a scalable solution to accommodate its rapid growth. Because the data ZirMed processes includes personal health and financial information, ZirMed maintains compliancy with federal regulations related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Check 21 and other laws and regulations governing the security and privacy of personal information.

ZirMed is obligated to maintain approximately 3 TB of content consisting of files as small as 1 K that remain unchanged throughout their lifespan; however, the files require accessibility and security. ZirMed's CTO, Chris Schremser, was challenged to seek out the best possible solution to back up the data, fixing the continual degradation of their file system caused by the massive amount of small files, and accommodating the company's recent growth.

Initially seeking a product that could integrate well, or at least not interfere, with its existing storage platform, ZirMed evaluated Caringo's CAStor software. Comparing CAStor's functionality and features to alternatives in the market, Schremser appreciated CAStor's ability to run on any commodity hardware, allow online access to archived content with primary storage speed, and its self healing, self managing, and self configuring architecture. ZirMed expects to create a system scalable to 6 TB, yet spend approximately $10,000 on hardware - a fraction of the price tag for most competitors.

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