HIPAA News

HIMSS 2008: Richardson Regional Medical Center Standardizes on Bycast StorageGRID Storage Management Software to Store and Protect Critical Reference Data

(Feb 28, 2008)-- Bycast, provider of grid-powered storage management software, announced that Richardson Regional Medical Center has standardized on Bycast StorageGRID storage management software to store and protect Richardson Regional's mission critical reference data within its enterprise archive. IBM's Storage business delivers the Bycast software to market as part of its Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS).

When its Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) archive needed additional capacity, Richardson Regional turned to Bycast and IBM to provide a solution that ensures the integrity, availability, and security of its confidential data in accordance with the federal government's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

Richardson Regional is now utilizing Bycast StorageGRID software within IBM GMAS configurable information lifecycle management policies to store the data automatically at the right location, on the right storage tier, at the right time -- creating a cost-effective storage solution. The storage system distributes data across two campuses, allowing doctors and other medical personnel fast access and highly available service from both Richardson Regional locations using the existing wide-area network.

"Previously, we used to mirror PACS images to our Bush/Renner campus. This required a high bandwidth connection and did not insure that the images remained unchanged over time," says Ron Franquiz, Richardson Regional Chief Information Officer. "The automatic and efficient replication of images to our second campus and the long-term data integrity that StorageGRID provides were extremely important to us. Leveraging existing storage resources was also a key financial factor in our decision."

Bycast StorageGRID, running within the IBM GMAS solution, allows Richardson Regional to utilize its current storage infrastructure, leveraging its existing investment and ensuring future storage requirements can be integrated seamlessly. Richardson Regional purchased eighteen terabytes of additional online protected storage, which will all be managed by GMAS.

"We are pleased that our storage management system helps Richardson Regional improve patient care by ensuring critical data is always available quickly and reliably," said Tim Chunn, Director Strategic Accounts, Bycast Inc. "StorageGRID is ensuring the protection and availability of their data on a large scale -- their users trust the system to pull both new data and older data quickly without any worry about data corruption or performance issues -- their vital data is always there when they need it."

"The seamless integration of Bycast StorageGRID software and our industry leading servers, storage, services and solution support is what truly delivers value to growing healthcare clients like Richardson Regional Medical Center," said Hugh Rivers, Business Line Executive, Healthcare and Life Sciences Solutions, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "GMAS delivers our customers a solution that is cost effective, highly automated and easy to manage over time."

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