The alliance of Dicom imaging technology with Google Cloud Platform is all set to offer HIPAA-compliant medical imaging storage solution to healthcare organizations, with a focus on disaster recovery.
Storing medical images on the cloud is challenging as these images are large and stress both the storage systems and networks. Additionally, the complexity increases as these images are protected by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other regulatory obligations, making it difficult for organizations to use the same storage tools used for other medical data.
Recognized as one of the largest sources of critical data, medical imaging storage demands security, archival requirement, and availability way beyond compared to other enterprise applications.
Based on these requirements, healthcare imaging vendor Dicom Systems along with Google endeavors to address these issues with Unifier Cloud Archive. This cloud-based solution is a combination of Dicom’s technology with Google’s HIPAA-compliant interfaces.
The hybrid cloud offers world-class security and is compliant with HIPAA security norms. Additionally, customers can access the extremely secure infrastructure managed by Google cloud.
As per Dicom, the Unifier Cloud Archive operates as a link between on-premise systems and the cloud, enabling organizations to access data from the infrastructure managed by Google Cloud.
Dicom Executive Vice President, Florent Saint-Clair expressed his views stating that the goal is to improve the disaster recovery process by ensuring uninterrupted patient imaging operation irrespective of the planned or unplanned downtime of Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS).
He added that the cloud archive can be used as a real-time source for relevant prior images. The Unifier Cloud Archive can also serve as a de-identification engine for providers who choose to become a part of machine learning projects.
McDowell, Senior Analyst for Storage and Data Center Technologies at Moor Insights and amp; Strategy, asserted his expertise, stating that as far as he knows, Dicom Systems’ is the first turnkey solution for backing up HIPAA-compliant medical imaging to the cloud.
