Royal Surrey consolidates data storage
- 23 July 2007
The Royal Surrey County Hospital has implemented a new enterprise data storage system from ONStor to help them consolidate all their data – digital x-rays and diagnostic images – into one file server application.
The trust’s IT department decided to look for a new storage system ahead of receiving its new PACS system from Fujitsu which would have meant an additional new storage environment to the ones already in use.
They chose ONStor for its ability to centrally store large amount of data and consolidate up to 40 petabytes of data into a single storage pool, getting rid of the individual silos that were previously being used.
Royal Surrey’s information manager, Simon Mortimore, said: “The ONStor NAS solution provides impressive data throughput and availability together with a much reduced management overhead, it has future-proofed the data storage needs of the trust for the next few years with plenty of scope for expansion.
“Anxiety about our back-up window is a thing of the past. Once we had overcome the challenges of data migration, the benefits of this solution became immediately apparent.”
ONStor UK’s managing director, Gerald Sommariva, told E-Health Insider: “At Royal Surrey, the trust were using many different file servers and so different data was housed in different silos, making it difficult to manage the file servers and ensure that data was properly stored and updated with other data stored elsewhere.
“Now, the trust has no need to manage file servers and with IT budgets so low in the NHS, that is a considerable savings investment which means that staff can focus more on patients and less on where electronic data is stored. Reducing that burden is a great benefit for trusts, and file server consolidation ensures that data is in one place and only that one place needs to be backed-up.”
Sommariva says that Surrey has already been seeing the benefits of having centralised electronic storage including saved costs and continuous availability of patient and trust data. The trust has also been able to make remote access to data easier by using this data.
The implementation was completed in three days, and although some issues arose in consolidating the different silos and file servers, ONStor was able to complete work on deadline and train trust staff quickly, to avoid any clinical disruption.
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