Health IT execs weigh in on data management

May 27, 2010

10:37 AM

INTRODUCTION

Conducted by BridgeHead Software, the 2010 Data Management Healthcheck Survey reveals the data storage concerns of healthcare executives. The survey had 133 respondents, over half of which are from the IT executive or director/manager level within their organization. Though the survey was widely available online, and to attendees of HIMSS 2010 and World of Healthcare IT, the following data and analysis represent the opinions of respondents located in the United States. Click the images in this slideshow to view them in full size.

IT Investment Priorities

Most respondents chose backup/disaster recovery as their most pressing IT priority for the next 12 months. Server virtualization and archive were the next two priorities, with digitizing paper records slightly behind.

Data Volume Growth

More than half of respondents indicated that their annual data volume is expected to increase up to 25%, with only 2.4% indicating a decrease in data growth.

Main Drivers For Growth

Digital imaging files and scanned documents account for most of data growth, with files held in EHRs following closely behind.

Storage System

Over 40% of respondents said that only some of their applications have archiving capabilities, while 13.5% have no plans for an age or value-based migration policy. Over a quarter of respondents have a full archiving policy and migrate content based on age and value.

Destination Media

Respondents were asked to indicate what destination media they use for archived data. Nearly 70% of respondents store data on disk. Cloud storage, a relatively new media in the health IT sector, is used by less than 10% of respondents.

Cloud Storage

Over 40% of respondents indicated that they will not adopt a cloud storage strategy within the next 12 to 24 months. Less than 10% are either already using cloud storage or are extremely likely to adopt cloud storage.

Reasons for Not Adopting Cloud Storage

Over 70% of respondents said that they will not use cloud storage due to concerns about the security or availability of data sent, while 42.9% indicated that cost was a major detriment to adopting cloud storage. Small hospitals that do not generate much data, or hospitals that have limited funds and IT resources are not likely to adopt cloud storage in the near future.