This article from the BJHC&IM highlights how hospital data centres may not be ready for the rapidly increasing demand for data storage that more patients and the move to digital information are creating.

An international survey of small and medium hospitals, by the HIMSS Analytics and sponsored by Dell, asked IT executives to assess the readiness of their hospital data centres to support new information demands such as electronic medical records.

The results showed that as well as demand on the data data centres increasing between 20% - 50% over the next two years, the UK IT executives face a number of challenges if they are to efficiently manage new information demands. These include:

• A lack of security standards
• Declining budgets - 50% of IT executives indicated that their IT budgets would decrease in the next two years
• Administrative efficiency as the top IT priority - rather than technology at the point of care
• Scaling and management of storage

Jamie Coffin, Vice President of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences commented: “We must ensure that all hospitals — large and small, new and existing — are equipped with the right IT infrastructure to support information demands today and in the future. We cannot simply throw servers and storage at information demand or complexity will over-run IT budgets and leave little support for the strategic HIT priorities which support healthcare reform and business initiatives.”

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