The Challenge

Health care professionals involved in medical imaging have faced the daunting challenge of long term storage and recovery of electronic images, form the time that electronic imaging technology first became commercially available several decades ago. Deep archive storage technologies have always been characterized by high cost, lack of scalability, and questionable longevity.

The imposing reality in long term medical image storage is that the retention periods of the images are simply longer than effective life of most storage technologies and media. At DeepWell we prefer to use the term “data, or image, preservation” as opposed to “data storage” when referring to our solutions.

The preservation of medical images for long retention periods, i.e. 7-25 years (or longer), requires much more than an electronic storage device and some management software. The requirement for long term data archival and preservation is exceedingly challenging, even to the most sophisticated information technology organizations, with the largest pools of IT resources and the largest budgets.

This challenge, when coupled with; increased regulatory requirements mandating that multiple copies of images be created and maintained, disaster recovery and security requirements, along with the potential obsolescence of storage technologies, is simply too onerous for most health care organizations. Sophisticated software tools, storage networking technologies, expensive hardware devices and storage arrays, along with data center resources (raised floor, power, cooling, etc.) are required to properly manage the preservation of medical images and studies. Many health care organizations, hospitals, and medical practices simply cannot afford to implement and manage these types of complex and costly storage environments.

So what are the choices for health care professionals tasked with these challenges? Design, implement and manage your own infrastructure? At what cost to the organization, and at what risk? Outsource your image storage? Most of the solutions available today are characterized by one or more of the following issues; proprietary vendor architectures, high startup costs, potential for technology obsolescence and risky data migrations, and skyrocketing costs, to name a few.

DeepWell Archival Services offers a mature, robust, cost effective, vendor neutral archive solution for health care practices, hospitals and organizations of all sizes. We encourage you to educate yourself about DeepWell’s solutions. Our solutions are straightforward, purpose built, and intended to provide effective, economical answers to the issues surrounding long term medical image preservation.

DeepWell Archival Services:
Image Storage Without Boundaries