UK research has discovered that half of doctors expect Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) to improve patient care by providing verifiable, consistent and complete data to support verbal handovers between medical staff.

“Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) will improve patient care, but only if the data feeding those records is well-managed,” said Cotterill, Chief Executive of BridgeHead Software, a healthcare storage virtualisation company.

“Healthcare data volumes are rising day after day. Secure data management is a challenge that cannot be avoided if hospitals are to prevent compounding their current infrastructure challenges as data volumes grow.

“To get the most value out of any digital patient records system – and in my view, the term ‘digital patient records’ encompasses all electronic data connected with a patient, whether the EPR, medical images or associated administration files – it is necessary for hospitals to consider a number of important factors concerning their data and storage management infrastructures.

“To be effective, patient records systems need to be underpinned by a robust data management and storage strategy so that data can be accessible and available to the relevant clinicians, hospital or administrative staff where and when it is needed without delay. Simultaneously, the data must also be safeguarded from inappropriate use and retained to support long-term patient care. An interoperable, vendor-agnostic data management and storage solution tailored specifically for healthcare’s complex data environment can streamline the management of patient information so that all hospital data can be stored in one central repository owned by the hospital,” he added.

“The good news is that more and more forward-thinking healthcare organisations are discovering that secure data management is the “missing link” in terms of maximising the value of a digital patient records system.”

According to the BridgeHead Software CEO, this approach would not only help tackle the recognised issue of vast data growth and increase the utilisation of existing storage resources, but it would also require less management, maintenance, power and cooling, and it would allow the data to be optimised by tapping the power of advanced and shared features.

Cotterill also commented that disaster recovery (DR) is another area where secure, integrated data management is crucial.

“Most healthcare IT leaders are navigating a notoriously complex data environment, with different systems from multiple vendors managing different types of clinical data in different locations, both on and off hospital premises. When systems go down, healthcare IT teams need to know which applications should be brought back online in which order, with which data and storage systems,” he explained.

“An effective data and storage management framework can help you separate the 80% of static data (that is unlikely to be access or changed again) typically found in healthcare organisations from dynamic data that is regularly accessed and likely to change. This management is extremely important so as to ensure that healthcare data is optimised and stored in the appropriate locations and media in a manner that ensures backups are properly managed and completed in the available time windows,” he added.