HEALTHCARE and DATA MIGRATION FPOFPO Th E Explosion in Data Has Healthcare IT Shops Coping with Information Control, Convenience and Cost

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HEALTHCARE AND DATA MIGRATION FPOFPO Th e explosion in data has healthcare IT shops coping with information control, convenience and cost. An eﬀ ective data migration strategy can help.

ospitals are grappling with to deal with a number of daunting storage. “In practice it’s anything an onslaught of data growing data management challenges: but straightforward.” H at exponential rates — with Exploding Data Volumes: As the Planning is perhaps the most crucial no sign of waning. In addition, they massive volumes of everything from step for achieving data migration must comply with regulations that structured and unstructured data, success. For healthcare organizations have one thing in common: Th ey digital imaging and video content grappling with evolving trends and require massive changes in the volume, increase, healthcare organizations Meaningful Use requirements, long- integration and management of data. must fi nd effi cient and eff ective ways term planning is particularly important. Couple this with a capricious to store, manage and protect much “I always advise IT managers to healthcare environment, ripe with larger data volumes than in the past. take a step back and look strategically acquisitions, data consolidation, Content Management: Th e need fi ve years down the road,” says Phil electronic medical records (EMRs), to make unstructured information, Salm, solution architect for CDW’s cloud computing, telemedicine, generated outside the EMR, accessible IBM software practice. “Th ey will patient online access and more. to clinicians within the EMR interface want to consider all the ways their Th e tumultuous mix has healthcare is increasing exponentially. organizations will engage patients.” IT shops looking for better ways to Data Privacy and Security: Patient Planning a viable long-term strategy manage data. Th e reason: Eff ective data portals and mobile access present requires an expert team that includes management is considered a key driver new challenges for maintaining patient not just IT but members from the for improved patient outcomes and privacy, data security and data availability. patient care and legal parts of the reduced costs over the next fi ve years. organization, with a good feel for day- Yet, a report from software fi rm Data Migration: Th ink Long Term to-day processes and workfl ows. BridgeHead noted a lack of healthcare Data migration consists of the “Try to fi nd practicing physicians and providers having a migration strategy transfer of data between storage types, other patient care providers who also for either transferring data or storage formats and/or computer have some technical and IT know-how,” moving older data, that is seldom systems. It is typically performed says David Lee Scher, owner and director, accessed, from primary storage programmatically in order to achieve the DLS Healthcare Consulting. “While there to less costly storage tiers. effi ciencies of automated migration. aren’t many of them, they do exist.” It is true that data migration can be While eff ective migration could be Estimating short- and long- a herculean task to handle manually. considered the linchpin for assuring term storage needs eff ectively is Fortunately, there are eff ective timely, accurate and quality data, it is not also critical. If switching vendors technology solutions to help IT decision- disaster recovery, data center relocation or storage protocols, or upgrading makers manage the complex issues or data consolidation. However, it can electronic health records (EHRs) and regarding hospital data migration. work in concert with these initiatives. other applications, ultimate storage “Many people see data migration needs may end up being far greater Data Challenges as a relatively simple, straightforward than they would be in the current Regulations and marketplace trends process,” says Rocky Standifer, environment. Many organizations will are requiring healthcare organizations CDW manager for systems and probably want to consider getting

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some outside expertise to help with Downtime: In any data migration will be a viable plan for eff ective this part of the planning process. there’s a tradeoff between downtime validation of systems and data, by and cost. IT decision-makers must key IT staff and medical professionals, Migration Planning Stage determine how much downtime the before the cutover takes place. Other items should also be considered organization can tolerate and plan a during the migration planning stage. migration schedule that takes tolerance Data Migration Risks Virtualization: With any data into account. Migrating diff erent As with all technology migration, organizations should strongly applications or parts of applications and operations, data migration does consider moving to virtualized servers data at diff erent times may be advisable. have some risks. Th ese include: and storage – and possibly even a private Some applications and data may be • Scope creep (additional machines) cloud. Th is will help to cut cost and migrated during night hours when only • Schedule slip (network enhance scalability, effi ciency and agility. emergency rooms are operating and can outage/bandwidth issues) Storage virtualization is an essential get by with read-only access. Other data • Planned outage/maintenance enabler of a smooth data migration and applications may have to be migrated window limitations process with minimum downtime, as well live as they’re still being accessed. • Resource backup/unavailability as the advanced disaster recovery and • Hardware failure business continuity strategies today’s Planning and Design • Poor qualifi cation/due diligence/ healthcare organizations require. Th e next step is a careful design of design (storage data sizing/capacity) Vendors and Protocols: To facilitate the migration methodology, scheduling • Data corruption n greater storage volumes and enhanced and tools. Planning carefully for the performance, IT shops may have long term allows IT managers to to move to new storage vendors, draw up a feasible plan that works for products and protocols. Migrating everyone — even if it’s not ideal. THE MIGRATION databases and applications is also more Th is is where to determine if third- SERVICES complicated than migrating fi les. party migration tools will be needed, ALTERNATIVE Organizations need to plan carefully such as EMC SAN Copy, Quest Secure how they will move data across Copy or dedicated migration appliances systems from diff erent vendors and from QLogic, Vicom Systems and Data migration can be daunting without the staff expertise to from, say, Fibre Channel to iSCSI or other vendors, or whether the current plan and implement the process Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), or or new storage vendors provide eff ectively. Consequently, many from fi le-based to block-based data the migration tools needed. healthcare organizations choose structures. Existing and new equipment Preparation: In this phase, prepare to go with an experienced third- party service provider in order to may have bridging capabilities that aid the old environment for migration minimize disruption. CDW off ers the process. Any of these transitions and install while confi guring the new three levels of migration services. will likely complicate and lengthen the environment to mimic the current one. Basic (Like-to-Like) Migration time it takes to do the migration. When moving storage geographically, Th is involves a migration of up to Data Storage Tiering and Archiving: strongly consider doing the migration 25TB, across the same storage As data volumes grow, it will onsite and then moving the equipment, platform, to up to two locations. become increasingly expensive and as migration across a WAN can be Standard Migration unmanageable to store huge volumes of time-consuming and error-prone. Th is is the most widely used patient information on high-performance Migration: If the plan and design service for migrations up to storage. Organizations should consider are eff ective, this should proceed in a 500TB. It includes migration how much and for how long data has somewhat predictable fashion. However, across diff erent platforms and two locations as well as moving to be stored on expensive storage and always expect the unexpected. some databases and applications. how much can be moved and archived, Validation and Cutover: Migration at what times, to other less expensive teams should consult with various Custom Migration Th is off ering includes just and lower performing storage tiers. healthcare departments to determine about any migration scenario Automated tiering solutions from exactly when to cut over to new and storage volume. major storage vendors such as systems and storage once they have Organizations can expect EMC and IBM migrate data across been migrated. It may make sense help with each step to storage tiers intelligently and can to do so at the end of a shift or a ensure data migration goes cut storage costs signifi cantly. weekend, for example. Also required as smoothly as possible.